UTJAZZ concert April 2 features music of Bill Cunliffe
The music of Grammy Award-winning jazz pianist, composer and arranger Bill Cunliffe will be featured in concert at the University of Toledo's Center for Performing Arts Recital Hall, Tuesday, April 2 at 8 p.m. The concert will be performed by the UTJAZZ Ensemble, a group comprised of student and faculty musicians. Tickets will be sold at the door and are $5; $3 for students and seniors.
The concert program will be selected from a range of Cunliffe's music including "Alfuencia," "Bonecrusher," "Chucho," "El Optimista," "Havana," "Samba de Milton," and "Te Wero Nui."
Jazz pianist, composer and Grammy Award-winning arranger Bill Cunliffe is known for his innovative and swinging recordings and compositions. Bill began his career as pianist and arranger with the Buddy Rich Big Band and worked with Frank Sinatra, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Benny Golson and James Moody. He has since established himself as a solo artist and bandleader, with more than a dozen albums under his name.
Bill’s recordings show his affinity for Latin rhythms—“Bill in Brazil,” “Imaginación,” his orchestral work “fourth stream … La Banda”—and pay homage to some of his musical heroes, including Paul Simon, Bud Powell and Oliver Nelson.
His most recent film project was the score for “On the Shoulders of Giants,” Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 2011 documentary about the legendary Harlem Rens basketball team of the 1930s.
Bill currently plays with his trio, his big band and his Latin band, Imaginación, and performs in the U.S. and around the world as a leader and sideman. His latest solo-piano release is “That Time of Year” (Metre Records, 2011), his take on traditional Christmas tunes, with guest vocalist
Denise Donatelli.
Bill is a winner of the Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition and has received stipends from the National Endowment for the Arts. Orchestras across the country and overseas have performed his works, and many of his recordings have charted in nationwide jazz polls.
He is a jazz studies professor at Cal State Fullerton and teaches at the Skidmore Jazz Institute and the Vail Jazz Workshop. His books Jazz Keyboard Toolbox and Jazz Inventions for Keyboard (Alfred Music Publishing) are standard jazz reference works. His Uniquely Familiar: Standards for Advanced Solo Piano was published in 2010.
Bill has received four Grammy nominations and two Emmy nominations. He was awarded a Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement for 2009 for “West Side Story Medley,” on the album “Resonance Big Band Plays Tribute to Oscar Peterson” (Resonance Records). He was nominated for a Grammy in 2010 for Best Instrumental Composition for his concerto for trumpet and orchestra, “fourth stream … La Banda,” performed by Terell Stafford and the Temple University Symphony Orchestra (BCM+D Records).
The Los Angeles Jazz Society honored Bill in 2010 with its Composer/Arranger Award. That year he was also named a Distinguished Faculty Member of the College of the Arts at Cal State Fullerton.
Press Release Contact Name: Angela Riddel
Press Release Contact Email: [email protected]
Press Release Contact Phone: 419-530-2452
Organization Name: UT Department of Music
Website or Link: www.utoledo.edu/cvpa/music/index.html
Organization Address: Towerview W & W Rocket Drive, Toledo, OH, 43606