Hilton Schilder – Live in New York

In September 2019, Cape Town pianist Hilton Schilder travelled to New York for a pair of appearances at Dizzy’s Club during a long weekend of programming at Jazz at Lincoln Center focused on composers from South Africa. In New York (2020) documents Schilder’s mystical Friday the 13th performance with Dizzy’s prominent Manhattan windows looking out onto a full moon.

Schilder’s New York trio is comprised of South African expat Jimmy Mngwandi on double bass alongside acclaimed Bronx drummer Will Calhoun (of Living Colour renown). Appearing on vocals for part of the set is Siya Makuzeni, notably reprising a decade-old collaboration with Schilder entitled “Paint Your World.”

The set opens with Schilder’s signature mouth bow energy smudge under the title “Alien of Extraordinary Ability” (an amusing phrase from his visa application) and includes a solo piano arrangement of Russell Herman’s avante-garde Estudio-era composition “Aryeah and the Dwarf” from the late-1970s. Also notable is the group’s energised vocal rendition of “The Art of Flying” and other fluid live manifestations of material from Schilder’s Rukma Vimana release of 2016.