Kait Dunton - Mountain Suite CD + Full Album Digital Download
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Los Angeles-based composer and pianist Kait Dunton delivers another stunning and surprising release with Mountain Suite, her second album of original music. What started as a few measures of music composed in the Canadian Rockies became a full suite of music brought to life by master interpreters Peter Erskine on drums, Bob Mintzer on tenor sax, John Daversa on trumpet and Darek Oles on bass.
The music on Mountain Suite is not what you would expect from a jazz record. Dunton intended it that way.“Kait Dunton must know what she's doing,” writes historian John Edwin Mason, “Because here she is -- amid of the clutter and noise of the internet age -- whispering.” As composer, arranger and producer of Mountain Suite, she brought her concept to the recording studio complete and ready to be framed by an all-star ensemble.
Using jazz as a springboard into creative realms of her own imagining, Dunton both refers to and defies idiomatic expectations of the genre. It swings, but it also slips into more subtle, shadowy places. “Befitting the title of the album, the music is airier, more serene and more nuanced,” writes S.Victor Aaron of Something Else! “If that made you think that this shares some similarities to an ECM recording, you wouldn’t be terribly far off, but there’s a classic Blue Note presence lurking, too.”
Kait Dunton - Planet D'earth CD + Full Album Digital Download
$ 15.00 USD
If not for trumpeter John D’earth, Kait Dunton might never have become a professional musician. So it’s only appropriate that her sixth album, Planet D’earth, is both a collaboration with and a musical letter of gratitude to the man who changed the trajectory of her life. “This record with John is a special thing,” Dunton says. “It’s not just another album. It’s a bigger story. A bigger meaning.”Dunton met D’earth in 2001 at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. She’d been playing piano for 15 years but had no sense of turning her love of music into a career. Still, the Spanish major found her way into D’earth’s improvisation class. That’s when everything changed. He was the first person to show her what a life built around music looked like.
He told her she could build one of her own—moreover, he saw that she needed to. John D’earth was like a planet that reoriented the gravitational pull of her life to center around music.Fifteen years after meeting him, the idea came to her while sitting in L.A. traffic. It was an imperative: “I have to make a record with John.” She spent the next year planning and writing. In the summer of 2017, D’earth came to L.A., and they recorded for two days at Sphere Studios.
The result is a collection of new compositions based less on a specific sound than on an idea, an exploration of John D’earth as man and musician. “John is very much interested in the meaning of music, the emotion or story behind it, so this felt like the right approach,” Dunton says. She used facets of D’earth’s personality and playing style as inspiration to guide the listener on a journey, from fun and adventurous to moody and minimalist. Apropos of the concept, D’earth also contributed three songs.
Kait Dunton - Real & Imagined CD + Full Album Digital Download
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Kait’s debut album, now a fan favorite with over 3 million streams on Spotify. Recorded in Denton, TX in 2008 with Ross Pederson on drums and Daniel Foose on bass. An imaginative take on the acoustic jazz piano trio, Kait's original music blends elements of Latin, folk, jazz and groove genres into a fresh new improvisational and compositional voice.
Kait Dunton - trioKAIT 2 CD + Full Album Digital Download
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Kait has long kept her gaze fixed well beyond the obvious, but as the cover of trioKAIT 2reveals, she and her close-knit bandmates are now set on an even more cosmic vision. trioKAIT’s third album showcases a new evolution in sound and form for the trio, expanding the acoustic piano/electric bass concept to include vintage keyboards, effects pedals and synthesizers. The album explores themes of discovery, change and imagination, while remaining grounded in the trio’s core values of composition and group sound.
trioKAIT 2 further evolves the collective voice that Dunton and her triomates -- electric bassist Cooper Appelt and drummer Jake Reed -- have forged together through tireless gigging and a shared open- mindedness during the past few years. A former member of Snarky Puppy during the band's formative years in Texas, Dunton carries forward the same "family" approach into her own trio. Fittingly for three musicians based in the show biz capital of Los Angeles, where opportunities take a dizzying variety of forms, trioKAIT folds influences from pop, rock, film scoring and other styles into their unique twist on the piano trio.
Kait Dunton - trioKAIT Casual CD + Full Album Digital Download
$ 15.00 USD
Anticipating the sequel to their acclaimed debut, Dunton and her genre-defying trio take a new spin on tunes by No Doubt, John Coltrane, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers on trioKAIT Casual.
With the release of their self-titled debut in 2015, pianist Kait Dunton’s trioKAIT introduced a modern spin on the piano trio tradition, reimagining the acoustic piano-bass-drums line-up for a generation raised with their iTunes permanently set to shuffle. Ever since that category-defying album was met with near-universal acclaim, earning enthusiastic write-ups from Downbeat and Jazziz and a spot on The Huffington Post’s “Best of Jazz for 2015” list, forward-thinking jazz fans have been eagerly awaiting the trio’s follow-up album.
Kait Dunton - trioKAIT CD + Full Album Digital Download
$ 15.00 USD
Eagerly defying genre boundaries with a fresh, inventive electro-acoustic sound, trioKAIT is a piano trio for a random-access generation. On their self-titled debut, (though this will be Dunton’s third album as a leader), the funky and eclectic Los Angeles-based trio - pianist Kait Dunton, electric bassist Cooper Appelt, and drummer Jake Reed - shuffles wide-ranging influences and Dunton's unconventional compositions into a refreshingly modern take on instrumental music that is as uncategorizable as it is infectious.
Kait Dunton - trioKAIT Live CD + Full Album Digital Download
$ 10.00 USD
Recorded live on May 17, 2018 at the beloved Blue Whale jazz club in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. Kait Dunton plays acoustic piano, Fender Rhodes, and the OB-6 analog synthesizer. With Cooper Appelt on electric bass and Jake Reed on drums. Watch full videos of these recordings on Kait’s YouTube channel!
Kait Dunton - Keyboards CD + Full Album Digital Download
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Keyboards is a celebration of vintage grooves and classic keyboards - specifically the Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer, Hammond organ and Clavinet. Together with Sean Hurley on bass and Jake Reed on drums, Kait and band evoke the classic instrumental funk of the 70s, with references from from Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters to Richard Tee’s Stuff, Steely Dan, Stevie Wonder, Weather Report, Earth, Wind & Fire, Hall and Oates & Michael McDonald.
