Pianist Hila Kulik lives in New York but when she realized that her livelihood was about to shut down, she took the quick path home to Israel.
The trip came with a big price tag: a full 14 days of solitary quarantine on her arrival.
For Hila, who graduated from the Jerusalem Academy of Music (via the Rimon Jazz Institute) and went on to earn her Masters from the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, the toughest part of the coronavirus pandemic so far has been delaying the recording session for her debut CD, which was scheduled for May.
“I’m still hoping I can do it this year. It’s going to be mostly originals, with a trio, quartet, quintet and also one piece with a sextet,” she’s said.
“I’m trying to see the positive side of this – I can work a little bit more on the music now. I even started to write something new yesterday, with this whole emotional situation.”
Hila’s playing defies categories, except perhaps to say that she always swings. In the video above, we hear her composition “Aata,” a taste of urban lamentation with rich harmony and hints of quite a few modern styles. It showcases her full-piano approach quite well, but don’t let her almost tentative quality here fool you! Hila also knows how to set that keyboard on fire when she’s covering the Blue Note catalog or a Latin piece.
Still at the very beginning of her New York career, she’s already becoming a staple player in the Apple. And in recent years she’s been working with singer Cyrille Aimée, and touring the US and Europe. She also appears with saxophonist Antonio Hart, trumpeter Wayne Tucker, and of course a string of other prominent Israeli players.
She began with the piano as a young girl, living in the remote northern Israeli town of Afula (famous mainly for its fresh-roasted sunflower seeds), and nearly quit when she was 12. But her father recognized her gift and made her continue.
“Honestly, I owe him everything. When you’re a parent it’s not easy when your kid is crying in front of you and telling you ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ And he just felt there was something there and he didn’t want to let me quit too soon.”
In her youth, Hila studied classical music at the Mizra Conservatory. From the age of 18, during her Army service, she was exposed to the harmonies and rhythms of jazz. Little by little she was swept up by it, also studying at the Center for Jazz Studies at the Israel Conservatory of Music in Tel Aviv (a collaborative academic program with New School Jazz in New York City), before continuing on to the Apple.
“Classical music gives you an attitude to your instrument, in the best way,” she says. “I just felt I couldn’t express myself the way I wanted to through classical music. Jazz is just endless. But I still play classical music, of course.”
Hila not only has very big ears, as the saying goes, but is clearly also a total pianist. She knows exactly how to get things cooking in the background as well as way out front on the bandstand. Check out how she holds it all together on this rendition of Tania Maria’s “Yatra-Ta” with singer Cyrille Aimée’s group.
Can you imagine what kind of energies Hila will have when they let her (and the rest of us) out of the coronavirus quarantine? Keep a sharp eye and ears out for her debut CD!
