Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1207269
Top: Eastwood appeared in his father's film "Honkytonk Man" in 1982. Bottom: deciding that the family business of acting wasn't for him, Kyle chose a career in jazz. Today, he's evolved into a widely respected bassist. "I've always wanted to do an album of all movie tunes," Eastwood says. He has recorded film music in the past, including, unsurprisingly, work on his father's films "Gran Torino" (which he co-composed), "Letters from Iwo Jima," "Million Dollar Baby," "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Mystic River." He's included several pieces from films the elder Eastwood is associated with such as "Gran Torino," "Unforgiven" and "The Eiger Sanction." "The rest are compositions by my favorite film composers," Eastwood says. Ennio Morricone, the Italian composer who penned the classic theme for the career-making Clint Eastwood vehicle, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," is on his short list. "He's in the top two or three," Eastwood says. "He writes beautifully haunting music. He's one of the greatest composers of sad and romantic themes." No doubt, given the bassist's background, an album like this was bound to happen. In his review of "Cinematic," London Jazz News critic Rob Mallows stated, "There is a sor t of divine inevitability that the bassist—son of film director Clint Eastwood—would succumb to the temptation." Although Kyle Eastwood was born in Los Angeles, the son of Clint and Maggie Eastwood, he grew up in small-town Carmel and attended Rober t Louis Stevenson School, where he caught the music performance bug. "I studied piano a bit when I was a kid," he says. "I started playing with some friends at Stevenson who were pretty good musicians. I picked up the electric bass because it seemed like they were always shy a bass player." Eastwood attended film school at USC for a time—he also appeared in a few of his father's films as an actor, including "Honkytonk Man"— before deciding he'd rather spend his time behind a bass than in front of a camera. The aspiring musician studied with Grammy-nomi- 134 C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • W I N T E R 2 0 2 0 Photo: Monterey Jazz Festival /Jim Stone Photo: AF archive /Alamy Stock Photo