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July 12, 2024 • 7:00 pm

Optional potluck dinner from 7 to 8 p.m. Music starts at 8 p.m. Indoor concert, RSVP required to attend. Salon 33 takes place in a private home in Princeton Junction. Address will be provided once you RSVP.
Steve Hiltner is a jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer, and the leader of Sustainable Jazz, a malleable 2-4 piece ensemble performing his original music. Classically trained on clarinet, saxophone, and piano, Steve got his start in jazz in Ann Arbor, MI, playing gigs with many top players on the Detroit scene, among them, Kenny Garrett. After learning music theory from books and jazz standards, he gained formal training in counterpoint and orchestration at the University of Michigan, and traces his music teacher-student lineage to musicians as diverse as Yusef Lateef and Bela Bartok. His organic style of composition draws inspiration from the great composers of jazz, Latin, and classical genres, from Tadd Dameron to Wayne Shorter to Johannes Brahms.
Steve composes for, and is musical director of, the all-originals Latin jazz group, Lunar Octet, based in Ann Arbor. Over 40 years, the group has performed at festivals in California and the US Midwest, including three performances at the Montreux Detroit Jazz Festival and a tour of England in 2022. Their 2019 release, Convergence, received international airplay and praise in Downbeat, Jazziz, and Jazzthing, reaching #1 in Amazon’s Hot New Releases in Latin Jazz.
In addition to music, Steve is a degreed botanist and water quality specialist, and directs his passion for nature into the non-profit Friends of Herrontown Woods and Veblen House Restoration, two projects in the Princeton area. He also pops up here and there with his short-scene theater troupe, Climate Change Cabaret.
Pianist Phil Orr has been happily interpreting Steve Hiltner’s very personal music since 2006 — a good, long ride. In addition to working with Steve, Phil performs with a variety of artists, most frequently Jerry Rife in “Jazz Hymns and Spirituals”, Trineice Robinson, Jason Kravits in “Off the Top!,” and the Phil Orr & More trio. Pre-pandemic, Orr hosted the weekly Jazz On Broad series at the Hopewell Valley Bistro. He also featured for several years in Seward Johnson’s “Sing Along with Sculpture” at Grounds For Sculpture, and with Jerry Rife, Norm Edge, and Sean Dixon in the annual Cool Yule Jazz concerts at Westminster Choir College. A member of the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) and a recipient of a NJ State Council of the Arts Fellowship, Orr’s own choral, vocal, keyboard, and chamber instrumental works have been performed in more than 150 venues in the Americas and Europe.
No charge, but donations help keep the salons going.