In the 1990s, Keane remained based in Brooklyn. He had reestablished contact with Margaret Bynoe, and academic who also hailed from St Vincent. They married and set up home together in 1991. Thanks to an old friend and colleague from the BBC in the 1950s, Eric Bye, Keane established a regular pattern of work in Norway from 1991 to his death. He contributed music to Norwegian television and stage productions for the next few years, also touring the country playing jazz. It was while preparing for one such tour that he became ill, subsequently dying from stomach cancer on 11 November 1997 in Oslo, at the age of 70.