"Exceptional talent" -The Jazz Observer (APFJ); A "guitar Wizard" -Source Magazine; "Some of the most incredible licks I've ever head" -Rock & Read Music magazine

John Hilton, a Jazz guitarist and composer from Saratoga, New York. Studied composition privately with David Berger in New York, conductor for Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. The John Hilton Trio was featured in a concert jazz series, playing with guests Antonio Hart, Bobby Watson, and Mark Vinci. John has hosted and performed in a long running jazz jam series with participants such as Nicholas Payton, Nick Brignola, and Mark Whitfield. He has also performed with Stefon Harris, Freddie Cole, Avery Sharpe, and Michael Longo, among others. Hilton's groups have performed at many jazz festivals, universities, and venues such as Madison Square Garden, the Rainbow Room, and the Troy Music Hall, and has opened concerts for Ray Charles and many others. John has recorded extensively and has performed on many live jazz broadcasts.

World Festival Jazz

World Festival Jazz creates astonishing blends of exotic musics within a jazz context by utilizing the talents of as many as six guest master musicians from diverse musical disciplines and a core quartet of top notch jazz musicians. Often visually mesmerizing, the superb musical interplay features rarely heard instuments such as the Middle Eastern Ney, the African Kora, and the Indian shehnai, as well as Caribbean steel pan, Balinese Gamelon and various other instruments and musical traditions from around the world. Care is taken to use authentic rhythms and modalities and then to show the universality of music by connecting each diverse musical language to the jazz diaspora.
World Festival Jazz is available for festivals, college performances, theaters and any venue interested in presenting cultural diversity. WFT can be hired as the core jazz quartet, whose specially chosen members are also accomplished on a variety of world instuments, and also as a larger band with guest master musicians from around the world, each featured on different exotic instruments.