Bassist Paul Keller and I went to East Grand Rapids High School at about the same time. He was already sitting in with Popeye Booker at The Fox Head in Ada, and Benny Carew's trio wherever the popular show drummer appeared. I remember dropping by Denny's after a swim meet (we swimmers eat a ton) and running into Paul in his tux following one of his gigs. He was learning his craft from the ground up, and then really exploded under the guidance of Dr. Bruce Early at Aquinas College, who encouraged Paul to form and then write for his own larger ensemble, Daddy-O. That was the first time I heard Charles Mingus's music played live by anyone. So while you may have heard Paul playing his bass at The Harley Hotel with the John Shea Trio, he was also creating his own musical identity at a young age.
And it's paid off for him. He's toured the world with and appeared on record with Diana Krall (check out a cut from her Nat King Cole album with Paul on bass and Russell Malone, guitar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE8z9pXn44w) and countless others.
Paul's led his big band on the southeast side of Michigan for nearly 40 years. Just last year he asked me to write the liner notes for his new album of Gregg Hill compositions, "Thank You Notes." Here's the title piece https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_tfsCYLHmg . And here's where you can pick the album up: https://www.gregghilljazz.com/product-page/paul-keller-orchestra-thank-you-notes .
Now, the liner notes:
Paul Keller
Thank You Notes
The contemporary American jazz composer Gregg Hill turned 80 in November of 2025. For the past 20 years, he’s realized the dream of documenting his myriad jazz compositions in not only folio form but in recordings by a fascinating variety of musicians. The Lansing Michigan-based Hill values community and trusts his collaborators with an allowance of full creative input. To Gregg Hill musical development becomes a process of co-composition, in this case with bassist/bandleader Paul Keller who spent nearly five years expanding Hill’s compositions with his transformative musical mind and contagious jazz de vive.
The Paul Keller Orchestra soon celebrates 40 years working together. These top of the line jazz musicians play weekly in Ann Arbor, originally at The Bird of Paradise jazz club and now regularly at Zal Gaz Grotto Club, and are up to swinging this original music into immortality. Keller’s affinity for the rhythmic, intricate, joyous, communicative music of Nat King Cole, Ahmad Jamal, and Oscar Peterson informs his arrangements and orchestrations of Gregg Hill’s multi-part compositions, and The Paul Keller Orchestra turns in an unforgettable performance. By drawing from all of jazz, Keller transforms these germinative ideas into one of the most fully realized recordings of Gregg Hill’s music available. And Paul’s ability on the bass? In a state ripe with international stars on the instrument Paul more than hold his own: he keeps standards high.
“Bopportunity” opens with a marching, trilling fanfare building to the trumpets blasting their call to arms, “Charles-ton!” “Charles-ton!,” before the full band swings the up and down melody to life, with the rhythm section in stop time. There it is: when a band can swing with the rhythm section laying out, watch it when they come in! When drummer Pete Siers and bassist Paul Keller lock in the tension and release they create is pure jazz excitement, as they’ve been doing since first playing together with Dr. Bruce Early from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, and then as part of The John Shea Trio in the early 1980’s prior to their move to Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. Paul’s bass has never sounded better on record. Trumpeter Paul Finkbeiner, original and versatile as he is, in this setting reminds me that Ann Arbor was Louis Smith’s adopted hometown.
If you’re familiar with previous versions of Hill’s composition “Dollah Hollah”
you may be surprised to find the insistent melody cast in the piano’s low register with pensive, ambiguous commentary from the bass trombone and others giving voice to an unsettled apprehension, made even more alarming when the entire ensemble joins their dark riff. But, after the trumpet announces the possibility of light, the ensemble brightens ever so perceptibly, and after the soprano insists on the light that dark riff moves up a register in the ensemble, signaling happy agreement, and the collective improvisation what follows is joyously affirming. What a ride.
One of the Paul Keller Orchestra’s secret weapons is clarinetist/vocalist Sarah D’Angelo. While she brings show-biz razzmatazz to Keller’s ensembles, and can sing up a storm (she knows all the songs) D’Angelo is first an instrumentalist (clarinet) who enjoys thrilling you with musical entertainment. As an adopted Michigander she’s “outdoorsy,” and the restorative power of nature conveyed in her lyrics to the title track, “Thank You Notes,” helps make this outstanding piece the album’s pick hit.
With a lovely rubato intro using counter melodies in the baritone sax and a beautiful part for clarinet and vibes, the tune finds it’s groove as Keller’s bass walks us in while Siers’s drums rolls us in to the band riff that we’ll be hearing throughout the arrangement. D’Angelo’s natural world imagery in the tradition of Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer comes through as a celebration, and from there on out that’s the vibe. Keller’s bass solo, mixing some strum with the pizzicato, all full bodied and musical, reacting perfectly as the rhythm section shifts gears (which is retained for the rest of the arrangement) climaxes when we hear again from the band, dot-da-dot-dot-POW signaling it’s time for the young Adam Mosley’s piano solo and he digs in. With a quote from “Oo-bop-sha-bam” and the variations Mosley spins from it we’ve attained lift off. Paul Keller loves a shout chorus. Man, this is one of his best.
It’s really amazing how music evokes the infinite mystery and depth of a summer night sky as the clarinet and vibes do on the modal waltz “Summer Night.”
Keller is judicious with his solo allotments, especially to the diverse saxophone section. His parts for the bass trombone of Chris Glassman and vibes of Kerry Kocher give the chords a full range of colors. You’ll hear on “Thank You Notes” the fertile crescent of jazz that is southeastern Michigan giving creative depth and historical resonance to these original compositions of Gregg Hill’s. This album documents the type of musical community, supported by a living, in person audience every week, which is beyond the capabilities of artificial intelligence. No replacing the human spirit. Thinking about it, there is really no better way for a composer to celebrate his 80th year or a working big band to celebrate their 40th.
Lazaro Vega is jazz director at Blue Lake Public Radio, the broadcast service of Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp (in their youth both Paul Finkbeiner and Kerry Kocher attended Blue Lake). His program streams 24/7 from www.bluelakeradio.org.
