I hope that my hosting skills aren’t rusty after the last couple years, because I’m feeling very excited for the upcoming Thanksgiving this week. In the past, maybe I took this holiday a bit for granted – it was just a stop on the way to the December holidays perhaps. But this year I am very thankful that we can safely have a family dinner, and in a first for us, we will be able to serve home grown lettuce from our new veggie garden too (shown above in my grapefruit salad with radicchio, avocado and pine nuts). I’m feeling extremely grateful for a day to reflect and enjoy our collective blessings this week for family, friends, nature and the abundance of beauty around us. As a musician, I am also thankful for my bandmates, engineers, studio hands and creative partners on our music. But let’s also be thankful for jazz itself, because both Thanksgiving and jazz originated in here: that makes jazz just as American a Thanksgiving pie! So this year I will also be thankful for every jazz fan, any jazz lover and all the jazz stations around the world!
In the pressure to figure out everything that might be needed in the next few days, don’t forget to plan the music, right? I always program something lively to start to get the conversations flowing, then quieter music for meal time, and then I like it lively at dessert again. I’d love to be able to share our new album, Paradise Cove with you – that’s what I’ll be playing - but it’s not out until Dec 2, (please mark your calendars to listen on that Friday!) I highly recommend our albums More Than Another Day, Life Is Beautiful and Transparent Sky though for any dinner party. I will mix these albums with Billy Holiday: Billie’s Best, the classic bossa nova Getz/Gilberto, probably Diana Kralls’ Live In Paris, and maybe Bill Evans, Rossa Passos, Clifford Brown or Norah Jones too – all jazz that everyone loves. There are so many places to listen to music these days – your favorite jazz radio station of course will have great music all week, or any streaming channel will have Lisa Hilton Music – including the Apple Music Pure Jazz Playlist, or you can always ask Alexa to play Lisa Hilton too! YouTube, Pandora and Spotify are convenient as they have actual playlists that I have created for listeners. If you still play CD’s like I do, order up for great listening any time of year. You can use the link below for quick access to reach streaming services, playlists, Amazon or iTunes: https://linktr.ee/LisaHiltonMusic
Whatever your plans are this week, I hope you enjoy these moments and wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Lisa