• Kash Killion Biography
  • Killion's Trillions Bandmate Bios
  • Press Quote

Kash Killion is a San Francisco based sarangi player, cellist, bassist, 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 sarangi and other string instruments in unusual situations and play any style of music and make it sound authentic.

Kash has recorded and/or performed with Sun Ra Arkestra, Chocolate Armenteros, Richard Egues ,Cecil Taylor, B.B. King, Billy Higgins, Reggie Workman, Bobby Hutcherson, Pharoah Sanders, Larry Willis, Steve Berrios, Francisco Aquabella, Quincy Troupe and Roberto Borrell-Orchestra La Moderna Tradicion. Kash also has a deep interest in world music. He studied with the great Indian musician, Ali Akbar Khan, and recorded with his orchestra. He has also studied with the great masters Sultan Khan and Rhamish Mishra.

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 around East St. Louis. Drawn first to clarinet, then voice, flute, electric guitar, electric bass, cello and sarangi.

Kash received a BA from Antioch University in Performance and Musical Composition and has continued his musical career with recordings, live performances , collaborations, workshops ,private classes and teaching. Kash is a luthier and repairs all string instruments. His instrument repair workshop is open for all types of Classical and Jazz string instruments as well as African, Indian and Asian String instruments. When he teaches he teaches instrument repair, the history of string instruments, master classes and cello, bass and sarangi lessons to children and adults from beginners to experienced musicans.

As a leader, his most recent release is KILLION’S TRILLIONS- THE LOST LEGACY OF THE CELLO. He has just released his new demo at WOMEX ’08 entitled SARANGI MEETS THE BLUES. In 2008 Kash recorded with B.B. King on the new Elvin Bishop album “The Blues Rolls On” that has received a Grammy nomination.

He is currently in the studio putting the finishing touches on his newest CD to be released of his many collaborations including: Jonah Sharp (Grateful Dead) and Marshall Allen (Sun Ra); Eddie Marshall and India Cooke; the Cuban clarinet band Aires de Concierto; and with Ernesto Camilo Vega live from the Havana Jazz Festival.

For more information please visit www.kashkillion.com

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