Pianist | Composer | Producer
EXTENDED DAYDREAM
LISA HILTON / PIANO
J.D. ALLEN / SAX, IGMAR THOMAS / TRUMPET, RUDY ROYSTON / DRUMS, LUQUES CURTIS / BASS
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Album Notes:
As a young girl growing up in a small town on California’s Central Coast, I was confused why I was required to play waltzes, mazurkas, gavottes, and other European dances of another era in order to learn to play the piano. I didn’t even know what these things were! I wanted to play music from my world, not someone else’s, so I was always a little disappointed with what I was supposed to be playing, and was always looking for something I wanted to play. At an early age, I dabbled in creating my own expressions—writing my first piano pieces around the age of seven. As I grew as a pianist, I became intrigued by those composers who could create something that seemed to be more than what was written on the page. How did Chopin, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, or Prokofiev achieve that three-dimensional quality to their music? When I was introduced to the blues as a teenager, I realized that some musicians were able to convey great emotion through music as well. My musical curiosity had begun: to write music that was about life today, to try to free music from the written page, and to express emotion as well.
It was our great American composers who soon resonated the most to me: the evocative Miles Davis, Bill Evans, and Chet Baker, who were associated with the style known as “cool” jazz, as well as the grooves of Horace Silver and Dizzy Gillespie, and the creative depth of Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. Although jazz has been around for over a hundred years, just as in classical music, there is a tendency to continue playing the music of the past, rather than writing music for our current millennium. As a composer, I am committed to representing our lives today, while referencing the long history of jazz, improvised music, and American blues, as well as any other style of music, in a genre-fluid way. Life today is fluid—we can access any style of music, from any era or genre, anywhere in the world. So the music of today should sound that way as well, right? Composing to me is an artistic expression of what we, all of us around the world, are experiencing collectively, and every year we record this music as a band in collaboration, expressing through our instruments, skills, and emotions. It’s always a thrill for me to hear how everyone interprets and improvises on what I have composed.
When there is disruption due to weather turmoil, politics, famine, war, floods, or fire, we all hear about these global experiences. Yet I am also aware, every day, of the beauty that’s in nature and in our communities. I personally choose to always look for what is good, “right” and freely given in this world: anything from a smile to a sunset—while still understanding our challenging times. In 2025, my personal experiences included living adjacent to the destruction caused by three fires in less than two months' time near my home in Malibu, California. Although my home survived, I have deep compassion for my three family members, my neighbors and friends who lost their homes, and everyone else who was affected by this experience. The music presented in Extended Daydream includes this layer of empathy. As musicians, our greatest hope is that this music will lift your spirit wherever you are around the world.
Lisa Hilton
August 31, 2025
So What was written by Miles Davis and recorded in 1959 for his album Kind Of Blue. This is one of the most beloved jazz compositions of all time, and I will never forget the power and skill the band exhibited when we recorded this piece without any rehearsal—this is the first take! I like the noir vibe and swing to Momentary Mystery a lot. Extended Daydream, the title track, recognizes that we tend to pray for what we had in the past—the daydream—yet we must look toward the opportunities that change will bring, even if we can’t imagine what that is in the moment; our daydreams can create hope for our future. Tropical Tuesday is a celebration of a “favorite” day with a Latin tinge. It’s Just for Now was intentionally written to create a feeling of change, using different modes (or keys) and slightly altered motifs—to sound familiar but a little different. Here & There & Back & Forth sums up not only life today, but also our ability as artists to draw inspiration from any era for our art. Blues on the Beach and Seabirds directly express the experiences of our recent fires, their destruction juxtaposed with the sheer beauty of nature in SoCal. The cover song "Wildflower" is a song of regret written by Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell; it is an excellent example of the extremely talented composers working today. Sunset Tale and Spacious Skies call out to seek peace in nature.
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Track List
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So What / 6:27 / Miles Davis
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Momentary Mystery / 6:19 / Lisa K. Hilton
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Extended Daydream / 6:29 / Lisa K. Hilton
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Tropical Tuesday / 6:20 / Lisa K. Hilton
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It’s Just for Now / 4:24 / Lisa K. Hilton
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Here & There & Back & Forth / 4:12 / Lisa K. Hilton
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Blues on the Beach / 6:26 / Lisa K. Hilton
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Seabirds / 4:54 / Lisa K. Hilton
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Wildflower / 4:06 / Billie Eilish O’Connell & Finneas O’Connell
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Sunset Tale / 4:50 / Lisa K. Hilton
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Spacious Skies / 5:06 / Lisa K. Hilton
Q&A
Q & A with Lisa Hilton for their new album entitled Extended Daydream - Featuring Lisa Hilton/piano, JD Allen/sax,
Igmar Thomas/trumpet, Luques Curtis/bass & Rudy Royston/drums
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Q: You’ve got a great band – how long have you been working with JD, Rudy, Luques and Igmar?
Lisa Hilton: I started playing with JD in 2009 for the recording of twilight & blues which is still a fav album of mine. JD brought me his drummer, Rudy for the HORIZONS album in 2015. When I went to see JD play at Smoke in NYC during the Winter Jazz Fest one year, the bass player I really liked was Luques, and he started playing with me in 2018 when we recorded Oasis. Then in 2022, Luques introduced me to Igmar, his former Berklee college roommate, and we’ve been working together since then. I love playing and touring with our band, and I enjoy their musical personalities, too.
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Q: What do you mean by their “musical personality,” and what’s your musical personality?
LH: I think musicians have tendencies in our performances, and those are often the things we enjoy listening to. JD has the most beautiful tone and range! He’ll be so melodic, and then boom, he hits the bottom hard! Rudy always surprises with his different percussive sounds - an unexpected chime or a snapping rim hit – you can never guess what he’ll do. Igmar can be unpredictable, so you tend to lean in when he plays, and then will launch on a virtuosic streak that completely blows you away. Luques has strong leadership and a lot of masterful versatility and plays anything well while putting his own stamp on it. For me, I enjoy being the contrast to what the band is doing. I love being light on my fingers after they’ve had a big moment. My sound is more laid back, too, which is also a nice contrast to the band. I always want them to sound great, so I like to facilitate that and it makes me really happy doing that. You can tell I’m a big fan of my bandmates, and I think the diversity of our strengths and sounds work really well together.
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Q: I noticed this album has a lot of variety in the song choices: from Miles Davis to Billie Eilish to Lisa Hilton.
LH: Our music is genre fluid and ranges from a beloved 1959 jazz composition to music of today. When you think about it, why only perform the music of the last century – there’s a ton of great composers working today too, right? Today’s streaming playlists can sound monotonous because they’re programmed to play similar tunes from the same era, so the music blurs together a bit. Our albums are fluid and lively – you can listen to this music anywhere and the variety holds your interest. We’ve always got something old and something new, and always have a bit of blues.
Q: You put out an album every year: where does all that creativity come from?
LH: Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve had a lot of creative energy. I played piano and flute, and was the accompanist for our grammar school glee club, and later, for high school plays. I’d also bake, sew and knit - just an abundance of creative activities! I never judge my creativity while I’m on a project: you never know how something will turn out until you’re all done, so I evaluate then. I never put rules or parameters or expectations on my creative time either, like telling myself I have to compose to a concept ahead of time. When I’m not touring or composing, I try and nurture my creativity by exploring other composers of other eras too: anything from Beethoven, to Basie to The Beach Boys. There’s always new things to learn and that always inspires more creativity from me.
Q: Now that you are done with your album, which are your favorite tunes on Extended Daydream?
LH: This is always tricky…I do ask the band and engineers after we record what their fav tunes are, and some people said Extended Daydream. Personally, I liked the swinging noir vibe of Momentary Mystery. Here & There & Back & Forth is a retro tune that’s just fun for us to play. Spacious Skies and Sunset Tale are about my urge for people to enjoy the freedom we have outdoors and to be a thoughtful steward of nature. Blues on the Beach, It’s Just for Now and Seabirds relate to the experience of the fires near my SoCal home this year, so they have an emotional base to them – to remember to look for the beauty even in times of trauma. I always enjoy a good mood tune, and Tropical Tuesday is exactly that – I love exploring what pianist/composer Jelly Roll Morton referred to as the Latin tinge. The style of jazz I play is referred to as ‘cool jazz’, and the composition by Miles Davis, So What, is a great cool jazz tune, and I LOVE how it came out with our band. I’m also really happy with Wildflower by Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell. I think people in general today like genre fluid variety, so that’s what we aim for in our jazz albums.
Rudy Royston, JD Allen, Lisa Hilton, Luques Curtis and Igmar Thomas at EastWest Studios.
PRESS
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