Kyle Eastwood

Kyle Eastwood
Kyle Eastwood at the Jazz Cafe, London
Background information
Birth name	Kyle Eastwood
Born	(1968-05-19) May 19, 1968
Origin	Los Angeles, California, US
Genres	Jazz
Occupation(s)	Musician, singer, actor
Instruments	Double bass, bass guitar, vocals
Years active	1990–present
Labels	Rendezvous

Kyle Eastwood (born May 19, 1968) is an American jazz bass musician. He studied film at the University of Southern California for two years before embarking on a music career. After becoming a session player in the early '90s and leading his own quartet, he released his first solo album, From There to Here, in 1998. His album, The View From Here, was released 2013 by Jazz Village. Eastwood plays fretted and fretless electric bass guitar and acoustic double bass. His new album "Time Pieces" was released in 2015.

Musical background

Eastwood comes from a musical family, as explained in an October 27, 2006, article from The Independent newspaper:

When I told my father, film actor/director Clint Eastwood, I wanted to be a musician, he was happy about it. Music has always been important to my family. My parents gave me my taste in music and my love of jazz from an early age. My father plays piano, my mother used to play, and my mother's mother was a music teacher at Northwestern University in Illinois.

Music was a prominent fixture in the Eastwood home. According to his biography with Hopper Management, Eastwood grew up listening to records by jazz legends such as Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Thelonious Monk, and the Stan Kenton Big Band with his parents, both jazz lovers. Eastwood attended the Monterey Jazz Festival numerous times with his parents, as well. "One advantage of having a famous father was I got to go backstage", Eastwood explained in an interview conducted by stepmother Dina Ruiz Eastwood. "I met a lot of artists, greats like Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughan. Looking back on that, I can see how much the musicians I met there influenced my career."

Eastwood began playing electric bass in high school, learning R&B, Motown, and reggae tunes by ear. After studying with French bassist Bunny Brunel, he began playing gigs around the New York and Los Angeles areas, eventually forming the Kyle Eastwood Quartet, who contributed to 1996's Eastwood After Hours: Live at Carnegie Hall, a concert saluting Clint Eastwood and his love of jazz. Clint Eastwood has always been supportive of, and interested in, Kyle's work, as Eastwood told The Independent: "As far as my father is concerned, as long as I was serious about my music career, he was supportive of me."

Two years later, in 1998, Sony released his first CD, From There to Here, a collection of both jazz standards and original compositions. After signing with the UK's Candid Records in 2004, Eastwood moved to Dave Koz's label, Rendezvous, which has released his last two albums: 2005's Paris Blue, and 2006's Now.

In addition to his solo albums, Eastwood has also contributed music to eight of his father's films: The Rookie (1990), Mystic River (2002), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), Changeling (2008), Gran Torino (2008), and Invictus (2009). He was nominated with music partner Michael Stevens for a 2006 Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Original Score (Letters from Iwo Jima).

In 2014 Eastwood, along with Matt McGuire, contributed to the score of the documentary Homme Less about homeless photographer Mark Reay.

Other work

Eastwood provided the voice of "Daddy" in the 8th PBS ident, "Daddy and Son." (2007) and the voice of 1980s-era DJ Andy Wright for the PC game The Movies (2005). Kyle had a supporting role in the 1982 Clint Eastwood film Honkytonk Man.

Family life

Eastwood is the son of actor-director Clint Eastwood and Maggie Johnson. He was born in Los Angeles, California, and grew up in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. He is the elder brother of actress, model and fashion designer Alison Eastwood, and paternal half-brother of Scott Eastwood, Francesca Eastwood, Kathryn Eastwood, Kimber Eastwood, and Morgan Eastwood. He has one daughter, Graylen (b. 1994), with Laura Gomez, whom he married in 1995 and divorced in 2006. He married Cynthia Ramirez in 2014 at his father's ranch in California.

Discography

Year	Album	Label
1998	From There to Here	Sony
2004	Paris Blue	Rendezvous
2006	Now	Rendezvous
2009	Metropolitan	Rendezvous
2009	Songs from the Chateau	Rendezvous
2011	Songs from the Chateau	Candid
2013	The View from Here	Jazz Village

Filmography

Composer/performer/arranger

• The Rookie (1990) - composer "Red Zone" with Michael Stevens
• Regarding Henry (1991) - uncredited performer
• Mystic River (2002) - composer, "Cosmo", "Black Emerald Blues" with Michael Stevens
• Million Dollar Baby (2004) - composer, "Boxing Baby", "Solferino", "Blue Diner" with Michael Stevens
• Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) - composer, score with Michael Stevens
• Flags of Our Fathers (2006) - arranger
• Rails & Ties (2007) - music by
• Changeling (2008) - arrangements
• Gran Torino (2008) - composer, score with Michael Stevens
• Invictus (2009) - composer, score with Michael Stevens

Actor

• The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) - Josey's son (uncredited)
• Bronco Billy (1980) - orphan (uncredited)
• Honkytonk Man (1982) - Whit Stovall
• The Bridges of Madison County (1995) - James Rivers Band
• Summer Hours (2007) - James
• J. Edgar (2011) - He was in the "Stork Club Band" (credited)

External links

• Official website
• Kyle Eastwood at the Internet Movie Database
• Profile at All About Jazz
• Kyle Eastwood at Allmusic
• "How Do I Look?" interview with Ben Walsh for The Independent
• "Kyle Eastwood: Going His Way" by Mike Zwerin for the International Herald Tribune