Day & Night

2016 release from the acclaimed pianist. Nineteen albums in, after working with the top-drawer jazz masters, like Antonio Sanchez, Christian McBride, Nasheet Waits, Sean Jones, Marcus Gilmore, Steve Wilson, Jeremy Pelt, Lewis Nash, Billy Hart, Larry Grenadier, Rudy Royston, and Bobby Militello, among others, Lisa Hilton strips her music down to the essentials and returns to the solo format with Day & Night. Hilton was last heard in this setting with her acclaimed 2010 release, Nuance, which All About Jazz said was a recording that focuses and captures the exquisite subtleties of life. For this album, Hilton looked to the great American composer Cole Porter-one of her favorite composers, for inspiration, (the CD title Day & Night is a nod to Porter's classic, Night and Day). Hilton includes a searing and simple take on Porter's classic, Begin the Beguine, which turns wondrously seductive under her touch. Her original tunes, Stepping into Paradise, A Spark in the Night and So This is Love do convey some of Porter's cosmopolitan essence, but also embedded in Hilton's realization of her nine original compositions is the vibrating energy and bluesy soul of fellow composer/pianists Count Bill Basie, and Horace Silver.