Andrea Keller is an Australian improvising pianist and composer, dedicated to the performance and creation of contemporary jazz and improvised music. She has devised and produced a multitude of projects, ranging from solo to large ensembles steeped in both jazz and Western art music traditions. Her projects focus on the creation of new music with an emphasis on improvisation, collaboration, and an expanding skill set (often including electronics, preparations, photographic images, poetry, film, and collaborations with musicians entrenched in varying musical traditions).
Andrea Keller
Born of Czech parents, Andrea Keller grew up in Sydney, Australia.
Convinced from a young age that she would be a musician, she studied piano, flute and saxophone at the Sydney Conservatorium High School. Inspired by her older brother, she penned her first compositions at the age of 10, and received her A-mus-a with distinction on piano at age 14. It was around this time that she was introduced to jazz music and the art of improvisation. Continuing to explore classical, jazz and original musics throughout her teenage years, her musical path became more defined when she moved to Melbourne in 1993 to study improvisation at the Victorian College of the Arts.
Keller has led many projects as a pianist, whose focus has been on performing her original compositions and arrangements. She currently leads the working projects: Monday nights at the Jazzlab (curating & performing), Transients (a series of trios presented every Thursday night at Uptown Jazz Café), Five Below (quintet featuring Stephen Magnusson, Sam Anning, Mick Meagher, James McLean & Andrea Keller), Journey Home (solo piano collaboration with photographer/film-maker Hayley Miro), Piano Club (solo piano concerts featuring Australian pianists and Q&A’s), The Composers Circle (6-piece ensemble of composers/performers), Solo/Duo/Trio (new collaborations in various groupings), and Celebrating Voice (series featuring vocalists who perform original and Australian material).
Past projects devised and led by Keller include: Still Night: Music in Poetry (featuring Vince Jones, Gian Slater, Julien Wilson, Stephen Magnusson & Andrea Keller), The Komeda Project (co-led with Miroslav Bukowsky and featuring James Greening, Erkki Veltheim, Andrew Robson, Ben Hauptman, Jonathan Zwartz, Evan Mannell & Andrea Keller. Reworking the music of Krzysztof Komeda), The Company of Pianos (a series of two-piano concerts featuring Tony Gould, Barney McAll, Sam Keevers, Tim Stevens, Matt McMahon, Luke Howard & Mike Nock with Andrea Keller), From Ether (Gian Slater, Geoff Hughes & Andrea Keller – music to images from the International Space Station), Family Portraits (solo piano with preparations, loop pedal and effects), Three Lanes (Genevieve Lacey – recorders, Joe Talia – revox tape machine & Andrea Keller - piano), The Andrea Keller Quintet/Quartet (featuring Eugene Ball – trumpet, Ian Whitehurst – saxophone, Joe Talia/Danny Fischer/Dave Beck – drums, Matt Clohesy – double bass with Andrea Keller), The Wayne Shorter Project (solo piano/nord reworking of Wayne Shorter compositions), The Bartok Project (reworkings of Bartok’s Mikrokosmos for improvising musicians), and the original Bennetts Lane Big Band (of which she was a co-founding member.
Keller is a Yamaha artist and a current member of the Australian Art Orchestra, the Sam Anning Sextet, Tim Wilson/Andrea Keller duo, Johannes Leubbers Dectet, Vanessa Perica Orchestra, and more. The diversity of her approach has placed her on stage with artists and ensembles such as; Lano & Woodley, Genevieve Lacey, Nicole Lizee (CA), Ronan Guilfoyle (IE), Arve Henriksen (Norway), John Surman (UK), the Song Company, Eddie Perfect, the Black Arm Band, the Australian Art Orchestra, Flinders Quartet, The Letter String Quartet, Allan Browne, Sandy Evans, the Bennetts Lane Big Band, Bernie McGann, Ten Part Invention, Mike Nock, Barney McAll, James Crabb, Tony Gould and more.
As a composer, Keller has been commissioned by a variety of musicians, ensembles and organizations to compose and arrange music. She is driven to explore new musical territory without boundary, and with a focus on collaborative processes and developing a strong musical identity. Keller is a represented artist of the Australian Music Centre.
Commissions include: Adelaide Festival /Chamber Landscapes Commissioning Circle, The Australian Art Orchestra, Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School, Merlyn Myer Composing Women’s Commission, Solstice Trio, The Sydney Women’s Jazz Collective, The Letter String Quartet, The Song Company, Marshall McGuire, Zephyr String Quartet, The Black Arm Band, Genevieve Lacey & James Crabb Duo, Poetica/ABC Radio National, Genevieve Lacey, Four Winds Festival/Kier Foundation, Australian National University Canberra, Claire Edwardes, Melbourne Women’s International Jazz Festival, Seraphim Trio, Ten Part Invention, Royal Children’s Hospital/Freedman Foundation, and Mike Nock’s BigSmallBand.
Keller’s discography includes numerous albums as leader, co-leader, and soloist, as well as appearances on others as a collaborator, side-person and composer. The most recent of these include: Life is Brut[if]al – Andrea Keller Five Below, Transients Volumes 1 & 2 – Andrea Keller, Five Below Live – Andrea Keller, Love is a Temporary Madness – Vanessa Perica Orchestra, Other Worlds - Johannes Leubbers Dectet, The Composers Voice – Elly Hoyt, The Komeda Project – Andrea Keller & Miroslav Bukovsky Octet, Still Night: Music in Poetry – Andrea Keller, Across A Field As Vast As One – Sam Anning Sextet, Finding the Balance – Paul Williamson Quintet, Offspring Bites 2 – Ensemble Offspring, and Move 50 – Michael Kieran Harvey & various artists.
Since 1996 Keller has been an active educator in Melbourne’s tertiary jazz & improvisation departments, including the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Melbourne, Monash University and Melbourne Polytechnic (formerly NMIT). She has been invited to give workshops at UNSW, the Australian National Academy of Music, Queensland Conservatorium, Talkin’ Jazz Brisbane, Monash University, Perth Jazz Society, Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts, Brisbane Young Women’s Jazz Collective, Queensland University of Technology, NMIT, University of Melbourne, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and currently leads educational programs such as Masters & Apprentices (ensembles of established & emerging musicians), and Girls Do Jazz (annual workshop series for young female and non-binary students in Melbourne).
Lauded for her music, Keller has received three ARIA Awards, seven Australian Jazz ‘Bell’ Awards, two Art Music Awards, an APRA Professional Development Award, the Merlyn Myer Composing Women's Commission, a Music Victoria Award, the Melbourne Music Prize (Beleura Emerging Composers Award), and fellowships from the Australia Council, and the inaugural MCA/Freedman Foundation Jazz Fellowship.
Keller holds a Bachelor of Music in Improvisation (Honours) from the Victorian College of the Arts (2001), a Master of Arts (Research) from Queensland University of Technology (2011), and is a PhD candidate at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney. She is a part-time Lecturer in Music (Jazz & Improvisation - Piano) at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne.
“This is totally original music; by that read no one else composes anything like this.”
“… The mind and sound-world of Andrea Keller, a place that is one of the most original – if not the most original – in Australian jazz.”
“Andrea Keller has one of Australia’s most consistently interesting musical minds.”
“Keller’s compositions are innately distinctive and interesting. If jazz conventionally has a soul rooted in the blues, Keller’s version is much more cross-fertilised with contemporary classical music… Keller was a joy throughout with her delicate touch and beautiful ways of building tension.”
“One of the most original thinkers on the Australian scene... she has the priceless ability to think outside the square.”
“One of this country’s most daring and fascinating composers, she produces work that bristles with surprises, a powerful blend of European lyricism with space and improvisation. ”