Lisa Kristine Hilton is an award winning American composer, and an acclaimed jazz pianist as well as an experienced producer and bandleader. Growing up on California’s beautiful central coast, Hilton was so entranced with the piano that she taught herself to play music with a colored keyboard guide, writing her first simple songs around six, before beginning studies in classical and twenty first century music starting at the age of eight.   Attending college in San Francisco she switched majors and graduated instead with a degree in art. In 1997, Hilton’s interest in music was reignited by a neighbor: Grammy award-winning producer/composer David Foster. Hilton resumed some studies in theory and composition with composer Charles Bernstein, and other professors at UCLA but Hilton’s art background still informs her compositions: she describes “painting” compositions using improvisation, and “sculpting” with rhythmic ideas from different cultures and eras. Hilton remains driven by the quality of musical impression that she experienced when she first began the piano and it is a unique characteristic that is most often noted in her reviews: “A deeply expressive style . . . rich melodies and improvisations . . . and an appealing impressionism.” -- Philip Booth, Downbeat Magazine. In the book, “The New Face of Jazz: An Intimate Look at Today’s Living Legends and Artists of Tomorrow” by Cicily Janus, it states that Hilton has been “compared to some of the best pianists in history.” Her piano style is often mentioned along with jazz pianist/composers Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, and Brad Mehldau.

 

Hilton’s West Coast cool jazz music draws on classic American jazz greats such as Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver and Count Basie, blues heroes Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson as well as classical traditions, and twentieth century modernists. She is a prolific composer: Hilton has recorded over two hundred tracks performing with many of today’s jazz luminaries, and her now twenty six albums regularly sit at the top of the Jazz Week and other radio/streaming charts, with over half million streams on Apple Music, a million on Spotify and three million on Pandora to date. As a soloist, with her trio, quartet or quintet, Hilton has performed at venues of all sizes including Carnegie Hall, San Francisco Jazz, The Green Mill, The Smithsonian, Cornell University, UCLA Royce Theater, The Dorothy Chandler Theater, Pepperdine University and others. 

 

Lisa Kristine Hilton is also the creator and co-author of the popular children’s book, If Dinosaurs Were Alive Today (Price Stern Sloan), as well as the updated digital version by the same name.