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Biography
Cynthia Hilts is composer, pianist,vocalist, lyricist, bandleader, and teacher. She recently returned to hometown Tucson, after many years in New York City. Her repertoire includes vocal and instrumental versions of the Great American Songbook, jazz standards and songs from many sources, and her own catalogue of original jazz compositions.
Ms. Hilts has performed solo and led a number of ensembles in festivals, concerts, clubs and radio broadcasts in New York City, the US, Europe, Mexico and Africa. She also directs musical endeavors of all sorts, including theatre, light opera and songwriters.
She performs solo, duo, trio and more in Arizona. Her Tucson jazz sextet, “No Fiction” will launch in 2018, featuring the great jazz musicians of Tucson. “Lyric Fury” is her NYC based all-star octet performing Hilts’s most adventurous compositions.
DownBeat magazine said – “Pianist Cynthia Hilts’s album Lyric Fury–a funky mambo full of Mingus-meets-Debussy-and-Carole-King flavor–is one of the more outrageous releases of 2017. Indeed, Lyric Fury is designed to challenge and entertain, start to finish.”
Cynthia has been heralded by the Arizona Daily Star as “One of the Who’s Who” of the vibrant Tucson jazz scene.