Speakers Profile - Elizabeth Geyer










Travels From:
Sydney

Fee Range: B


Growing up in Adelaide, South Australia, Elizabeth Geyer developed an early love of music, playing by ear before taking classical piano lessons at age 6. A deep love of singing led to roles in two professional stage productions, Werther and Evita (1980), and two European tours performing with her school choir.

In seventh grade , a shortage of trumpet players in the school band led to trumpet lessons, which eventually led to a professional trumpet career following a performance degree at Adelaide University. Beginning as a classical trumpet major, Elizabeth quickly reverted to jazz after an improvisation class taken on a whim indulged her love of creating and playing by ear.

During her years of trumpet study, Elizabeth earnt pocket money with her first professional regular gig, playing piano and singing every Friday in a city piano bar.

Upon completing her degree, Elizabeth then made her living as a busy professional freelance trumpeter in Adelaide, involved both in the jazz scene and as a commercial player, touring the USA and performing with Bobby Shew, Don Burrows, Gene Pitney, Tommy Emmanuel and Harry Secombe among others.

Moving to Sydney in 1996 Elizabeth continued freelancing and also began studying under Kerrie Biddell, who encouraged her to take her singing more seriously and opened the doors to a successful career as a jazz singer.

From there Elizabeth formed and began performing regularly with her own band in addition to her ongoing stint as feature vocalist and trumpet soloist with John Morrison's Swing City.This was a busy time during which she featured alongside many artists including James Morrison, Barbara Morrison (USA), Darryl Somers, Rhonda Burchmore and Marcia Hines to name a few, and also in the Don Burrows quintet. As the featured vocalist in November 2002 for the Duke of Edinburgh awards, Elizabeth performed in front of Prince Edward, and also with James Morrison and Swing City in the 2000 Opening Ceremony for the Sydney Olympic Games.

That same year, craving the opportunity to further develop her own voice, Elizabeth released a self-titled album of jazz standards, subsequently performing at various national jazz festivals including Manly, Thredbo, Darling Harbour, Newcastle, Canberra and Adelaide Jazz Festivals, the River Festival (Brisbane). However, it was not until 2003 when Elizabeth truly began to come into her own, discovering her true unique voice through a previously undiscovered passion for songwriting and collaborating with songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Tony King to write and record 'The Dream'.

Positive reviews, national ABC airplay and strong community airplay support around Australia soon followed which enabled Elizabeth to support herself by now performing and writing her own material exclusively. She undertook her first national tour to great success in 2005, and had also become by now one of the most popular feature artists for exhibition evenings at the Art Gallery of NSW.The album also produced a Top Five placing in the National Songwriting
Contest for 2006 with the song 'You Carry Me Home' .

Elizabeth has just completed the finishing touches to a self-penned new album 'Sweeter Than Fire' , due for release shortly. The Dream' is currently available through the MRA label and through online American store CD Baby.