Hilton was born in San Luis Obispo, a small town on California's central coast. Her father was a college professor and her mother was an accountant. At approximately the age of six, she began playing piano, first teaching herself to play with a colored keyboard guide and composing simple songs. Later she was inspired by stories of her great uncle, Dutch pianist Willem Bloemendaal. Although her early years were dominated by classical music and 20th-century music study, in her teens she became interested in jazz and blues. Seeing the blues duo Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee in concert had a lasting impact, as did the music of Jelly Roll Morton, Robert Johnson, and Muddy Waters. She played piano for her grammar school glee club starting in third grade, later joining orchestra and band on flute, and performed piano scores for high school musicals. Hilton moved to San Francisco. As a college student who studied art, she put music aside to complete a degree in art and design. After returning to music, she was drawn to jazz. She often mentions that she draws on her background in art to create compositions, painting and sculpting her compositions with ideas from music.
Return to the piano
In 1997, Hilton's interest in music was reignited by a neighbor, pianist David Foster. She resumed her studies in theory and composition with composer Charles Bernstein at UCLA. Her first album, Seduction, was just solo piano. Since then she has recorded about one album a year. The albums include cover tunes by musicians such as Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, and Ann Ronell. Hilton began working in 2005 with the engineer Al Schmitt. They have continued working together, with Doug Sax, Gavin Lurssen, Fernando Lodeiro, Larry Mah, and James Farber. She has produced every album and has been a voting member of the Producers and Engineers Wing of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences since 2003.
Compositions
Hilton has received acclaim for her compositions. She cites Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Horace Silver as her most important compositional influences. Hilton uses improvisation, free jazz, and shifting modal key centers for impressionistic compositions like "When it Rains." She use ideas from other art forms. "French composers like Debussy used harmonic 'impressionism,' but I like to use improvisational ideas in an impressionistic way," she told Phil Freeman of Burning Ambulance. "Seurat's pointillism technique is something I have applied to music, for example." "Music feels like my first language," she added. "It feels like I can create an experience compositionally that allows others to also feel that experience, much like a good writer being able to describe love, or a painter or photographer creating an image. I think I can compose and play the sound of twilight, of a warm summer's day, of love or grief, of a subway or dolphins even. I think of my – and our – music as abstract or non-figurative paintings." Hilton ventures into longer musical forms, fusing jazz onto classical forms, as in "Midnight Sonata" from her album Nocturnal. On Escapism her arrangements paired modern jazz modalities and classical techniques with a "lofty sophistication reminiscent of classic piano music from Beethoven, Chopin, or Stravinsky.".
For over twenty years, Hilton has lived in Malibu, California. She has often said that the mountains, waterfalls, and beaches inspire her compositions, such as "The Sky and the Ocean" from Horizons. The daughter of a biology professor, she values nature and brings it into her compositions, as in the titles "Vapors & Shadows" from Oasis, "Mojave Moon" from Escapism, and "Sunset on the Beach" from Day and Night.
