Drummer, pianist, composer Anton Kot will appear alongside a quartet of heavy hitters— all members of the Litchfield Jazz Faculty— to open the Saturday July 30th Litchfield Jazz Festival lineup in Washington CT. Anton’s bandmates include Don Braden on saxophone, Avery Sharpe on bass, Julian Shore on piano, and Jean Caze on trumpet. Kot, the youngest performer at the festival, was a child prodigy who joined the Litchfield Jazz Camp as a drum student at age 10.
His parents were visual artists, his mother teaching at a school of visual arts, who often brought their young son to galleries and art openings to deepen his knowledge and understating. But they weren’t alone in this endeavor. They were aided by his devoted Polish grandmother on his mother’s side, a self-taught pianist, poet and composer, and his grandfather, a painter and avid collector of classical music records.
Growing up surrounded by art and music, Anton said, shaped him as a very young child. “My first words were two musical notes I sang as an infant when announcing I was hungry. At times I would put myself to sleep singing. I did this every day.” He found himself entertained, he recalled, by all the sounds around him and would try to mimic these sounds using random objects. His parents, excited to see their son’s interest in things musical, got him his first drum set at the age of three. At four, he began piano lessons.
This was the age at which he started performing. “I was four”, he remembered, and at the New York Botanical Gardens. It was a winter outdoor event and Louie Miranda was playing. “He called me on stage to play the bongos and picked me up to perform then, and I played at his gigs from then on through high school …”
Anton Kot playing the drums at Le Duc des Lombards, Paris, 06/05/2022 ©Marion Ruszniewski
Kot’s career has now seen him perform world-wide with many outstanding musicians. Before he finished elementary school, he worked with the Indonesian Gamelan Orchestra alongside Pak Sumarsam and I. M. Harjito, playing at the International Gamelan Festival in Indonesia. He also performed in the Branford Quarry, jamming with Gaston “Bonga” Jean Baptiste in Brooklyn, New York, and in the Tribeca Film Family Festival. By age 10, he would begin studies at Litchfield Jazz Camp and spend his summers there through high school. In high school, Kot performed at the Berklee College of Music High School Jazz Festival Competition and would later tour with Sean Jones, Kurt Elling, and the Carnegie Hall National Youth Jazz Orchestra in Taiwan and China.
Anton Kot is about to start his junior year as a talent scholarship student at NYU and finds himself catching up on gigs previously cancelled by the COVID-19 pandemic and working toward a Music Performance degree. Most recently, he was commissioned by the New Haven Symphony’s Alasdair Neale for a piece for orchestra and piano, premiered June 11th, at the International Festival of the Arts and Ideas with Kot on the Grand Piano. This spring he spent a semester abroad and performed at the famed Le Duc des Lombards and the Sunset/Sunside Jazz Club in Paris with the NYU Paris Ensemble with saxophonist David Prez and Laurent Coq.
Off to an admirable start in his performance career he has no intention of slowing down any time soon. “My personal goal is to find more than one answer to a problem, or different ways to come to the same answers, even overlapping ones.”
Visit www.litchfieldjazzfest.com to learn more about the performances in store July 29 – 31. To purchase tickets to see Anton Kot and the whole July 30th Litchfield Jazz Festival Saturday lineup at the Thomas S. Perakos Arts and Community Center go to ljf2022.eventbrite.com.