• Kash Killion Biography
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Kash Killion is a San Francisco based cellist, bassist, sarangist, vocalist, and composer, who began his professional music career at age ten. Kash is a visionary musician who stretches the boundaries of what one would expect from string instruments. He hears the cello as a bass, a violin, a guitar, a saxophone, and a piano, and he seeks to share that with his listeners. He strives to put the string instruments in unusual situations and play any style of music and make it sound authentic. His focus is to create something unique, and from that his music and CDs have wide appeal, as there is something for everyone to enjoy.

Kash records and performs with various ethnic music ensembles and chamber orchestras ranging from the Sun Ra Arkestra to Cuban/Salsa bands such as Roberto Borrell y Orquesta La Moderna Tradición to classical music and Indian classical music, and has over a hundred recordings to his credit. He also performed as a singer on the movie The General's Daughter and numerous other movie and commercial projects. Kash has played extensively with musical icons such as B.B. King, Cecil Taylor, John Zorn, Julius Hemphill, Reggie Workman, Sun Ra, Butch Morris, Paul Murphy, Glen Spearman, George Lewis, Alvin Baptiste, Chocolate Armenteros, Richard Egues, Larry Willis, Steve Berrios, and Francisco Aquabella.

Kash also has a deep interest in world music. He studied sarangi and cello with the great Indian musician, Ali Akbar Khan, and recorded with his orchestra. He has also studied sarangi with the great masters Sultan Khan and Rhamish Mishra. He has recorded Afro-Cuban music with several salsa groups. He composes and performs for both dance troupes and poets. Major poets he has accompanied including Amiri Baraka, Alice Walker, Quincy Troupe, Shirley Le Flore and Jessica Hagdorm.

Born in Alton, Illinois (Miles Davis’ home town), Kash was raised listening to jazz—his brother was a jazz trumpeter—in the very fertile music scene in and around East St. Louis. Drawn first to clarinet, then voice, flute, electric guitar and electric bass, Kash started performing at age ten.

Through high school he was working in doo-wop, funk, soul, rock and church groups. In college he studied classical contrabass, violin, and cello. He attended L.A. City College and holds a B.A. in Performance and Musical Composition from Antioch University. Piano giant Horace Tapscott became his mentor and Kash played bass in Tapscott’s Ark Orchestra; drummer Billy Higgins was part of that scene, too. This rekindled his interest in straightahead jazz. On the straightahead jazz front, Kash has played with great players like Donald Byrd, George Cables, Billy Higgins, Bobby Hutcherson, James Newton, and Billy Bang.

Kash’s interest in avant garde jazz was ignited by Sun Ra in 1978—and further heightened by meeting and playing with Pharoah Sanders. In L.A. Kash was playing bass as his primary instrument, but getting more and more interested in cello. When he moved to the Bay Area in 1984, he switched almost entirely to cello, mainly because it provided him with the freedom to play in a variety of groups because of the versatiltity of the instrument.

In addition to recordings and live performances Kash's contribution to music extends to educating others. He has taught string instuments, music theory, and performance arts to students from ages three to adult. Teaching venues range from elementary schools to Rutgers University, North Carolina University, and Duke University. He teaches masters classes in cello and sarangi. He’s also an accomplished luthier and repairs all string instruments.

His passion for world music has kept him exploring different possibilities of combinations of the right vibrations.

Cello now.

KENNETH NASH: Kenneth Nash is creating some of today's most rhythmically compelling music. Breaking out into a superbly syncopated realm all his own, this accomplished musician, composer, producer, arranger and author is building bridges of sound with compositions that unite numerous forms and idioms. Fusing jazz, pop and world-music elements, he creates an effervescent brand of music. He draws on a wealth of experience that stretches over two decades. The impact of his music is as refreshing as the compositions themselves. His sounds pay no heed to formulas; crossing cultural and international boundaries. "What I'm doing is taking my musical influences: classical, Cuban, African, jazz, pop, funk and hip-hop and expressing them within the melodic musical language I've developed," says Nash.
www.kennethnash.com

SANDY POINDEXTER: Sandy Poindexter from Oakland, California, has played violin since a very young age. She is a versatile musician who plays jazz and classical music as well as other genres. Sandy has toured the U.S. and abroad with John Handy playing concerts and festivals.
www.danzon.com/eng/bios/bios.htm
Kash brings a classical background to his cello playing. He skillfully plays both inside and outside, straight-ahead and avant-garde. He knows his instrument and has fantastic technique. On this evening he bowed his cello like a classical player, plucked it like a bass, and at the climax of his long, provocative solo laid it across his knees without even stopping for a quarter rest and strummed it like a guitar, all within the context of his ideas and presentation. The audience loved it.
Jazz Now, August 1994