“A delightful innocence, tempered by Tin Pan Alley wit and romance and a drowsy desert atmosphere to soothe 21st-century woes. ★★★★” -The Times
Multiple award-winning New York City vocalist Hilary Gardner and her band, The Lonesome Pines, transport audiences to the nostalgic heart of the American West, delving into repertoire from the “singing cowboy” era of the 1930s-40s and beyond. They have played to sold-out houses at NYC’s Dizzy’s Club (Jazz at Lincoln Center) and Birdland. In 2025 they debuted at the Rochester International Jazz Festival, toured the California Bay Area, and performed in London and at the Biennale Architettura in Venice, Italy.
The Times named the group’s debut album, On the Trail with The Lonesome Pines, a top-10 Best Jazz Record of 2024, praising its “delightful Manhattan-meets-moonshine gems,” and The Wall Street Journal deemed it “something new and wondrous.” On the Trail won the 2025 Western Heritage Award for Outstanding Traditional Western Album and was named Western Album of the Year award from the International Western Music Association.
Hilary Gardner and The Lonesome Pines’ live shows paint high-spirited and harmonious soundscapes of the archetypal cowboy’s life on the trail - replete with pale dawns, purple hills and the high lonesome feeling of camping out beneath a vast, star-filled sky. Says Hilary, “These songs remind us that the answers to many of life’s big questions can be found in contemplative solitude, the beauty of the natural world, and the arms of a loved one.”
Hilary has appeared on Broadway, performing as the live, onstage singer in Tony-award winner Twyla Tharp’s Come Fly Away. Backed by a 19-piece big band, Hilary sang solos and duets with Frank Sinatra in a performance hailed by critics as “wonderful” (Huffington Post), “elegant” (USA Today), and “terrific” (New York Observer). She took the stage with Jeff Goldblum and his band on Goldblum’s opening night at Café Carlyle, prompting New York Magazine to call hers "a voice worth seeking out." She can be seen as a jazz singer in Oscar-winning filmmaker Errol Morris’s Netflix miniseries, Wormwood.
