Gary Versace was born April 25, 1968, in Greenwich, Connecticut (his own official biography specifies the Cos Cob section of town). His first lessons came from his mother, a singer and church organist; his father pushed him toward the accordion, but Versace gravitated to piano instead and moved into jazz by high school. He later took private lessons with pianist Kevin Hays and earned a master's degree in music performance from the Eastman School of Music. Beginning in 1993 he spent eight years as a tenured professor in the jazz studies program at the University of Oregon, and it was during that Oregon period that he picked up his mother's old instrument, the organ, alongside piano.

Versace relocated to New York City in 2002 and quickly became one of the city's busiest and most versatile keyboardists, working across piano, Hammond B3 organ, and accordion in bands led by John Scofield, John Abercrombie, Maria Schneider, Al Foster, Regina Carter, Anat Cohen, Ellery Eskelin, Ray Anderson, Rich Perry, John Hollenbeck, Ralph Alessi, Kurt Elling, Madeleine Peyroux, Matt Wilson, Brad Shepik, Ingrid Jensen, and dozens of others. His Discogs credit history runs to more than 175 recordings between 1997 and 2026, the overwhelming majority as a sideman, which reflects just how in demand he became on all three of his instruments.

He built a leader catalog alongside that sideman work, beginning with the piano trio date Winter Sonata (2004, M&I Jazz) and continuing through a run of organ- and piano-led SteepleChase albums: Time and Again (2005), Many Places (2006), and Reminiscence (2007). He also co-led a duo album with Lee Konitz, Organic-Lee (2006, SteepleChase), and cut Outside In (2008, Criss Cross Jazz) as an organ-trio leader date. One of his most heard sideman-organ appearances from this period was on saxophonist Eli Degibri's Live at Louis 649 (2008, Anzic Records), a working organ trio with Degibri on tenor and soprano saxophone and Obed Calvaire on drums, recorded live at the Manhattan club of the same name; Degibri has his own full JazzProfiles.com profile. In 2010 Versace joined drummer John Hollenbeck's band The Claudia Quintet as an added fifth voice on piano for Royal Toast (Cuneiform Records).

Versace's profile rose further through his long tenure in Maria Schneider's orchestra, where he played accordion alongside pianist Frank Kimbrough on records including Concert in the Garden (2004), Sky Blue (2007), the Grammy-winning The Thompson Fields (2015), and Data Lords (2020). After Kimbrough's death in December 2020, Versace moved into the orchestra's piano chair himself, appearing on piano (with Julien Labro now on accordion) on the 2026 EP American Crow. He also appears on trumpeter Ralph Alessi's ECM album Quiver (2016), which drew a 4.5-star review in DownBeat, and on vocalist Kurt Elling's Passion World (2015), where he is credited across all three of his instruments. His own leader dates continued through the 2010s and 2020s with Black Nile (2011), the Frankfurt Radio Big Band collaborations Songs I Like A Lot (2013) and Songs You Like A Lot (2020, with vocalists Kate McGarry and Theo Bleckmann and drummer John Hollenbeck), the piano trio All For Now (2020, with bassist Jay Anderson and drummer Obed Calvaire), Time Frame (2022), a duo record with guitarist Nate Radley, Snapshots (2023), and the trio session Three Track Mind (2026, Sunnyside), co-led with bassist Francois Moutin and drummer Rudy Royston.

Versace has been named a Rising Star on Hammond organ in DownBeat's Critics Poll multiple years running in the mid-to-late 2000s and has continued to place in DownBeat's Critics and Readers polls in the years since. The Jazz Journalists Association named him Organist of the Year in 2012 and, in a mark of how unusual his three-instrument profile is even among working jazz keyboardists, gave him its award for Best Instrumentalist - Instruments Rare in Jazz for accordion in 2018. He appeared twice as a guest on Marian McPartland's NPR program Piano Jazz, with McPartland calling him "endlessly inventive" and someone who "really has an extraordinary talent." In 2017 he joined the faculty of the Eastman School of Music, his own alma mater, as an Associate Professor of Jazz Studies and Contemporary Media, where he continues to teach piano alongside an active international touring and recording career.

Versace's defining trait is versatility across three instruments that are rarely mastered by the same player at a high level: piano, Hammond B3 organ, and accordion. On organ he works in the soul-jazz organ-trio tradition, providing walking bass lines and comping behind a horn or guitar lead on records like Many Places, Reminiscence, and Eli Degibri's Live at Louis 649; on piano he moves comfortably between mainstream postbop trio settings (Winter Sonata, All For Now, Time Frame) and denser modern-composition contexts, including The Claudia Quintet's chamber-jazz writing and Ralph Alessi's ECM lyricism. As an accordionist, an instrument he originally resisted as a child, he has become one of the few jazz musicians to use it as a serious orchestral color, most visibly inside Maria Schneider's large ensemble. That range, combined with steady work as a sideman for musicians as different as John Scofield, John Abercrombie, and Regina Carter, has made him one of the most consistently in-demand keyboardists in New York jazz since the 2000s, recognized by DownBeat's critics and readers and by the Jazz Journalists Association on both organ and accordion.