Kyle Eastwood (born May 19, 1968) is an American jazz bassist, composer and actor. 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 1990s 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 in 2013 by Jazz Village. In addition to his solo albums, Eastwood has composed music for nine of his father’s films. Eastwood plays fretted and fretless electric bass guitar and double bass.
Early life
Kyle Clinton Eastwood was born May 19, 1968, the son of Margaret Neville Johnson (born 1931) and actor-director Clint Eastwood. He has a sister, Alison, who was born in 1972. He also has six known paternal half-siblings: Laurie (b. 1954), Kimber (b. 1964), Scott (b. 1986), Kathryn (b. 1988), Francesca (b. 1993) and Morgan (b. 1996).
Career
Music
Eastwood comes from a musical family, as noted 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 prominent 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, who were both jazz lovers. Eastwood attended the Monterey Jazz Festival numerous times with his parents. “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 bass guitar in high school, learning R&B, Motown, and reggae tunes by ear. After studying with French bassist Bunny Brunel, he began playing gigs in New York City and Los Angeles, forming the Kyle Eastwood Quartet which contributed to Eastwood After Hours: Live at Carnegie Hall (1996), a concert in honor of Clint Eastwood and his dedication to 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 album, From There to Here, a collection of jazz standards and original compositions. After signing with the UK’s Candid Records in 2004, Eastwood moved to Dave Koz’s label, Rendezvous, which released his albums Paris Blue (2005), and Now (2006).
In addition to his solo albums, Eastwood has also contributed music to nine 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), Invictus (2009) and J. Edgar (2011). 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 and Matt McGuire contributed to the score of the documentary Homme Less about homeless photographer Mark Reay.
Other work
Kyle Eastwood provided the voice of “Daddy” in “Daddy and Son” (2007) and the voice of 1980s-era DJ Andy Wright for the computer game The Movies (2005).
He had a supporting role in the 1982 Clint Eastwood film Honkytonk Man.
Personal life
Eastwood has a daughter, Graylen (b. March 28, 1994) with Laura Gomez. They married in May 1995 and filed for divorce in 2005.
Eastwood married Cynthia Ramirez in September 2014 at his father’s Mission Ranch Hotel in Carmel, California.
Discography
Studio albums
| Year | Album | Label |
|---|---|---|
| 1998 | From There to Here | Sony |
| 2004 | Paris Blue | Rendezvous / Candid |
| 2006 | Now | Rendezvous / Candid |
| 2009 | Metropolitain | Rendezvous / Candid |
| 2011 | Songs from the Chateau | Rendezvous / Candid |
| 2013 | The View from Here | Jazz Village |
| 2015 | Time Pieces | Jazz Village |
| 2017 | In Transit | Jazz Village |
| 2019 | Cinematic | Jazz Village |
Compilation albums
| 2016 | Candid Kyle | Candid |
|---|
Soundtracks
| Year | Album | Label |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Letters from Iwo Jima | Milan / Warner |
| 2007 | Rails & Ties | New Line / Sony |
| 2009 | Invictus | Candid |
