FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
F Y C: B E S T J A Z Z A L B U M Lisa Hilton Extended Daydream
Winner: Best Jazz Album / World Entertainment Awards 2026
Winner: Best Jazz Solo Performance / Hollywood Moment / World Entertainment Awards
★★★★★ All Music Guide
“The Best of Jazz Albums of 2025": ‘Extended Daydream’ London Times
“The Best of Jazz Album To Listen To This Week” ‘Extended Daydream’ London Times
"Hilton has carved out a career as not only an impressive pianist with her own sound, but one able to write fresh & personal material too. Like all great artists, she continues to take on new worlds to on this impressive journey." Jazz Weekly
“Considerable sophistication…gorgeous, atmospheric…an impressionistic journey.”
New York City Jazz Record
"Hilton’s playing exerts a constant gravitational pull that centers each of the selections. Her voicings open space for the horns to express, her rhythmic placement nudges the groove forward without forcing it, & allows her compositions to unfold like well-paced conversations.” The Jazz Word
“Another winner. The quintet proves essential to the album's success, contributing both improvisational energy and subtlety as they navigate the shifting moods of Hilton's inventive compositions.” All About Jazz
F Y C: B E S T A R R A N G E M E N T / S O W H A T / B Y M I L E S D A V I S
Lisa Hilton / Piano
JD Allen / Grammy Nominated / Tenor Sax
Igmar Thomas / Trumpet
Luques Curtis / Grammy Winner / Bass
Fernando Lodeiro / Grammy Winning /Tracking Engineer
Jay Newland / Grammy Winning /Mix Engineer
Eric Boulanger / Grammy Winning / Mastering Engineer
Recorded at East West Studios
As musicians, our greatest hope is that this music will lift your spirit wherever you are.
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 have always wanted to play music that seemed to fit into life today, 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?
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.
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