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Album Review

Lisa Hilton: Coincidental Moment

Read "Coincidental Moment" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic


As good as Coincidental Moment is, there is an uncharacteristic sense of sameness infused in many of these bossa blues. As she notes in the liners, lauded and long-trusted pianist Lisa Hilton intended the music to illuminate the cool energies and history of jazz while relating to these hair-shirt times in which we find ourselves privileged to listen to her music . But perhaps it crossed some invisible line where what has been accepted as gospel from Hilton--her ...

3
Liner Notes

Lisa Hilton: Paradise Cove

Read "Lisa Hilton: Paradise Cove" reviewed by Lisa Hilton


"I think we all need jazz in our lives these days. From its inception, jazz and blues were created to boost moods or morale by America's earliest composers, such as Scott Joplin, Ferdinand Jelly Roll Morton, and Nick La Rocca around the beginning of the 1900s. The music on Paradise Cove was composed and created to refresh and reboot our collective spirits and inspire all to create a personal “cove" or protected “paradise" for our well-being. Our world desires and ...

2
Album Review

Lisa Hilton: Paradise Cove

Read "Paradise Cove" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic


At a time in our collective consciousness when it appears nothing is functioning as it once did, or is as reliable as it once was, or gives us purpose and solace as we once knew, along comes the soft sustaining magic of Lisa Hilton's gorgeous new recording, Paradise Cove, and for all of its enchanting forty-five minutes all is right with the world again. Hilton may not have the wild chops of many of her peers or the ...

2
Album Review

Lisa Hilton: Life is Beautiful

Read "Life is Beautiful" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic


There's an affirmation of goodness to the music of pianist Lisa Hilton, a quiet something of a positive nature that is known intrinsically true. But the world and its crowded barges of babbling talking heads are frantically convincing us all otherwise. So listen in to Life Is Beautiful before it's all too late. Without flash, pyrotechnic soloing, or virtuoso histrionics, Life is Beautiful casts an aura that envelops and holds. Intimately reworking tunes she has recorded throughout her ...

6
Album Review

Lisa Hilton: Transparent Sky

Read "Transparent Sky" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic


It is a real wonder why a genuinely and generously creative spirit such as pianist Lisa Hilton hasn't broken through to a larger audience. Her philosophy of new ideas tied to older heartbeats, countered effusively by an actively improvisational impressionism, has resulted in a discography brightly colored with real beauts such as Chalkboard Destiny (2019), Oasis (2018), Escapism (2017), Day & Night (2016) and Nocturnal, (2016) (all on her own Ruby Slippers Productions.) Now add Transparent Sky to ...

6
Album Review

Lisa Hilton: More Than Another Day

Read "More Than Another Day" reviewed by Peter J. Hoetjes


Pianist and composer Lisa Hilton's More Than Another Day is yet another effort reacting to the gloom which hung over the music industry in 2020. That does not mean the album is necessarily bleak. A brief survey of the cover photography will tell a very different story. Donning a wide-brimmed hat, blonde hair splayed out over a black summer dress, carrying a bouquet of white roses in one hand and a weathered, vintage suitcase in the other, Hilton seems to ...

9
Album Review

Lisa Hilton: More Than Another Day

Read "More Than Another Day" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic


It's very comforting to know that, as Annus Horribilis (2020) crashes to its long awaited, cursed demise, pianist/composer Lisa Hilton delivers, as she has faithfully over the past few years, a year-end gift to aficionados everywhere with her soulfully bluesy More Than Another Day. When you consider all our anxious caution for the year ahead, More Than Another Day may be a more laid back affair given 2019's watermark Chalkboard Destiny (Ruby Slippers Productions), 2018's ascendant Oasis (Ruby ...

7
Album Review

Lisa Hilton: Chalkboard Destiny

Read "Chalkboard Destiny" reviewed by Doug Hall


Not surprisingly, considering the political and social climate existing on the threshold of 2020, pianist and composer Lisa Hilton finds ripe inspiration for material on Chalkboard Destiny. Addressing the point, she writes: “Our future, our destiny, can be continually reshaped—we are not beholden by history or traditional myths, allowing us a freedom in creation." With a stellar line-up of musicians, including JD Allen on tenor sax, Rudy Royston on drums and Luques Curtis on bass, Hilton is set to begin ...

10
Album Review

Lisa Hilton: Chalkboard Destiny

Read "Chalkboard Destiny" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic


By finely feathering-in her Pacific cool to a gritty, more urban sense of persistent chaos, Chalkboard Destiny may very well be the ten-song set which places pianist Lisa Hilton well beyond the borders of West Coast fandom and East Coast fetishism and gathers her the wider audience she richly deserves. And here's hoping, because Chalkboard Destiny and the quartet Hilton calls her own--drummer Rudy Royston, bassist Luques Curtis and JD Allen on tenor sax--create a vibe which is ...

3
Album Review

Lisa Hilton: Oasis

Read "Oasis" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic


Like whispers of a better place just around the corner if you're prepared to take the ride, the tunes on West Coast mainstay and prolific pianist/composer Lisa Hilton's exciting, well paced Oasis work their way into your listening space and take up residence. They hop, bop and bounce along her keyboard. Hilton, who has enlivened stages across the continent and counts among her jazz influences Horace Silver, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington as well bluesman Muddy Waters, rockers ...


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