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Biography

Grammy nominated composer, arranger and jazz pianist Bill Cunliffe is gathering nationwide attention with his innovative and swinging recordings and compositions He first fell under the influence of jazz by studying at Duke University with the great pianist Mary Lou Williams. He received his masters from the Eastman School of Music, and won several Down Beat Awards for his big band and orchestral pieces.

After teaching at Central State University, in Wilberforce, Ohio, he toured as pianist and arranger with the Buddy Rich Big Band, and working with Frank Sinatra. He then played and toured with many legends of jazz, including Ray Brown, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Benny Golson, James Moody, and Joshua Redman. Currently, he plays with his own trio, his group Imaginacion, and duets with the great jazz flutist Holly Hofmann, with whom he has recorded five CD's.

Bill was the 1989 winner of the $10,000 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Award, and has received stipends from the National Endowment for the Arts. His three albums for Warner/Discovery Records all charted in nationwide jazz polls. His books "Jazz Keyboard Toolbox, " and "Jazz Piano Inventions" published by Alfred Publications, are fast becoming standard reference books in jazz, and his big band compositions are published by Kendor Music, and the University of Northern Colorado Jazz Press. His choral music is published by Santa Barbera Music Publishers. Bill is a Baldwin Pianos artist, and was Marian McPartland's guest on her famed "Piano Jazz" radio show in June '98.

As a composer and arranger, Bill has been performed by many orchestras, including the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, the Illinois Philharmonic, the Reading (PA) Symphony, and the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra. Among his works are a three movement "Romantic" Fantasy for piano and orchestra, a festive overture, "Viva Mexico," and numerous works for big band, orchestra, and choir. Recently, the Rodger Fox Big Band of New Zealand released a CD of Bill's jazz orchestra compositions. He is currently composer in residence at All Saints Episcopal Church, in Pasadena, California, and Associate Professor of Music at Cal State Fullerton.

On the classical side, he performs his own distinctive arrangement of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” with orchestras, and performs with his group Trimotif, which he co leads with oboist Phoebe Ray, and featuring David Shostac on flute, often featuring his own works.

Bill's latest projects include a groundbreaking audiophile recording, "Live at Bernies", with bassist Darek Oles and drummer Joe La Barbera done both to enhanced CD and to 12 inch/ 45 rpm vinyl (!!!) at the famous Bernie Grundman mastering facility in Hollywood for the Groove Note label. In addition, his latest, which spent a month in the #2 position in the JazzWeek radio polls is “Imaginacion” an album featuring his Latin Jazz Nonet, on Torii Records. The arrangement “Do It Again” on the CD was nominated for a Grammy in 2006.
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Press

"ACE OCTET in a LATIN GROOVE"

by Don Heckman
LA Times, April 22, 2004
"Pianist Bill Cunliffe brings his powerful "big band" to the Vic in Santa Monica.... Cunliffe added another brightly colored entry to (his) resume via his Latin Jazz Big Band. Calling an 8 piece ensemble a "big band" was a stretch in nomenclature, yet the title was fully applicable in terms of the group's power and vitality. In a pair of numbers, "Heat Wave" and "Pure Imagination" the horns were orchestrated in close, tightly moving harmony, the sumptuousness recalling textures associated with Gil Evans. Cunliffe's "Bone Crusher" opened up plenty of space for the ensemble's fine soloists with (trumpeter Kye) Palmer making most of the opportunity. If there was anything missing from an otherwise scintillating evening, it was more of Cunliffe's piano work... the music would have benefited from a larger does of his far-ranging improvisational imagination."

"Spotlight"

by Ernie Rideout
Keyboard Magazine, January 2004
"Hearing Bill Cunliffe on CD is always a major treat... for in addition to his superb piano playing you usually get his exrtemely clever arrangements, tailor-made for a hand-picked group of first-rate players... What takes this CD from great to sublime is the... compositions of Earl Zindars.... With a nod to Art Farmer's Jazztet, Cunliffe sets Zindars' tunes with an expert ear for the power and beauty of a world-class three-horn lineup. And throughout, his playing is inventive, melodic, and soulful."
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Interviews

"L.A. Jazz Scene Interview April 2010"

by Fred Jung
All About Jazz, February 29, 2004
LA Jazz Scene
 

LAJS : What is a typical week like for you? Are you highly scheduled or do you have enough free time for yourself?

Bill : I teach at Cal State Fullerton from Tues through Thurs, so those days are packed. I have to be there by 10, and living in Studio City, that can be a challenge just getting there. My iPhone has a great GPS program on it, though, so I can usually figure out the best way to get there in under an hour. I get out of school around 7, and might just do homework, grade papers, etc, until 8. Then I'm home in about 50 minutes. Often I stay down there one night a week... there are many good cheap hotels down there.

I teach improvisation, direct four combos, a big band, have five piano students and teach arranging or jazz history. It's a lot crammed into three days, but I really enjoy my students.

LAJS : You lived in New York for some time: You sent us columns from N.Y. so we got an idea about the jazz scene there. Why did you return to L.A.? What didn’t you like about New York?

Bill : Dave, I've been torn between NY and LA for quite some time. I still have a place in NY, which is rented out a lot, and I love the people there, the scene, the energy. But it's expensive, and living there takes up a lot of energy.

LAJS : It seems that you have found enough work to satisfy you here in L.A. What makes L.A. good for musicians--the weather, connections, networking, more recording opportunities, etc. What do you think it is for you?

Bill:  For me, work has been good in LA, and I have a great church here (All Saints, in Pasadena, where I'm composer in residence) and a great girlfriend, Wanda Lau, who is a copy editor for the LA Times. And the weather doesn't hurt, either! I never got into the studio scene here, just fell in with great players, such as John Clayton, Clay Jenkins, Bob Sheppard, and Joe LaBarbera, and just couldn't leave. Trombonist Bruce Paulson, who now lives in New Zealand, had a great weekly jam session at his house... that's where I met a lot of my friends. I do feel that because I travel a lot, LA is cool. If I were dependent on the LA jazz scene for my happiness, it wouldn't be enough. It's a very good scene, don't get me wrong, and very underrated, but one night in NY or even Chicago tells you there's a lot more out there.
These days, I'm as much a composer as a player, and LA is good for that. Excellent engineers, and recording studios, and plenty of great players on every instrument. As the industry recording thing declines, it's actually better for composers now, because you can get your stuff played and recorded, and these amazing players are available and interested in new things.

LAJS : You were nominated for a Grammy and won. Tell me about the recording and how it came about. What made it special for you?

Bill:   George Klabin, a fine studio engineer (and owner of a health food supply company) recently started a record label, Resonance Records. We had done a record, Blues and the Abstract Truth, Take 2, (the music of Oliver Nelson) and we were very pleased with it. He knew I was an arranger, and he wanted me to help him do a tribute album to the music of Oscar Peterson. He knew of a Romanian pianist, Marian Petrescu, now living in Finland, who he said was the perfect guy. Boy he was right on that one. Marian is amazing... really can do Oscar, technically. And a beautiful cat, easy to work with, and a lovely spirit.  Growing up, Oscar was my favorite player, and even though I had to get away from him, somewhat, to find myself, I thought it would be a lot of fun. We picked out some of the repertoire together, and I really wanted to do some things from the Oscar "West Side Story," album. George was like, I don't know, it's a lot of stuff, too much music, and I reminded him of the classic Buddy Rich arrangement of West Side that I played every night for a year and a half. I thought we could do a 13-14 minute medley of the stuff, and it would be a real big hit, especially on live gigs. He agreed, and we did it, and it came out great. In fact, he said, "this is a Grammy winner," and I poo-pooed him. But he was right!

LAJS : Tell me what the whole Grammy timeline is: How are you nominated, by mail or a phone call? Then what happens? What’s the time element here, weeks, months? How did you feel when you were nominated? Who was the first person you called with the news?

Bill:   Grammy submissions are due in the fall. If you're a member, you can nominate yourself, or someone else who is a member can nominate you. To be a member, you have to have recorded or participated in an album that's available nationwide, which means it's primarily musicians, engineers and producers who vote. There are three levels, a call for ballot submissions, a call for final nominations in each category, and a final vote for the winner, which is announced in the end of January. The members vote, as far as I can tell, for the final nominations, and the winner. There are committees of respected experts, in each chapter, there are 12 or 13 of them. They are also a factor in the voting, which is great, because the Grammy, to win, your peers have to vote for you. From what I can tell, and I'm not an expert, it's a combination of the chapters, and the popular vote.
'm savvy enough to know that as a jazz player I'm competing with the universe, but the arranging category is a bit smaller, so the odds of recognition are a little better.
This was my third nomination. I really didn't expect to win, there were some great entrants in my area, Jeremy Lubbock, Michael, Giaccino, and Vince Mendoza, one of my personal heroes. But it was a real thrill.

.LAJS :Tell me what its like to actually stand on the stage and accept the Grammy. What were you feeling?

Bill:  If you go on www.grammys.com, and scroll to minute 27 of the awards (it was taken down a few weeks later) you can see me, breathlessly running up to the front (I was sitting in the back with my girlfriend, Wanda, and friends Tierney Sutton and Alan Kaplan, her husband. I wasn't expecting to win, obviously, so I was way in the back, just talking. For whatever reason, I had sketched out my "bullet points" in the bizarre case of having to make a speech;  you gotta thank George Klabin, the owner of the label, the cats in the band, your girlfriend, Oscar Peterson (since I borrowed much from him in the arrangement), and, of course, Leonard Bernstein.
When I got up there, I saw that in the band were a lot of friends, Ron King, Brandon Fields, etc, and I said, to no one in particular, "yeah, getting an award is nice, but you guys have a GIG! Get me on it!!"
I've heard from so many friends about the award, and it's been a wonderful experience, but I returned to earth very quickly. The next day, I was sitting in my living room with dozens of Cal State Fullerton student schedules sprawled around me, trying to figure out who's playing in the jazz small groups there. Sigh.
Winning the Grammy has made me a little less obsessive/compulsive about my career. I always feel like, I don't do enough, I need to study, create more, hustle more work, etc, etc. All you musicians know how that is. But I can relax a little bit more. I certainly don't have to worry about winning the Grammy ever again, or being concerned about how people think about me. And more importantly, I can really reflect that I've taken, maybe not the perfect life path, but a very good one, and I've done pretty much the best I can to make the most of myself.

LAJS : What are your future plans? What are looking forward to, more collaborations, composing, or something entirely new?

Bill:  . What I'm really excited about now is the NY premiere of a concerto I've written for trumpeter Terell Stafford and the Temple University Symphony Orchestra. It's called "fourth stream... La Banda," and it's a fusion of jazz, classical, and latin music. They are doing it at Lincoln Center in two weeks, and recording it next week. I have always loved the orchestra, and it was a thrill to write exactly what I wanted to write, and get it played.

LAJS : If you weren’t a musician what would you choose to do to make a living? I’m just being curious here, maybe you have other talents or skills that mean a lot to you.

Bill:   I' m lucky to live in Studio City, just two blocks from a very fine Italian restaurant, Vitello's. Many of you remember it from the Robert Blake days. I used to take people on my Studio City/Hollywood tour. I take them to Robert Blake's old house, it used to have written on it, "Mata Hari Ranch." eeecchh! Then I take them to Vitellos, and show them the dumpster. Well, not THAT dumpster, but any old one. You just make up things, like the double decker bus drivers in NYC do. (According to them, Madonna lives in about 8 different apartments in New York.) Then I take them to the Brady Bunch house, on Dilling, the one they showed at the beginning of the program.
April Williams has been managing the music there for over a year now, and she's a great lady, supports the cats, does everything right. The room is acoustically excellent, and the young sound guys are cool, into the music, and do their job. She's had a few big bands in there, and it sounds fantastic. So I decided to do, perhaps, the dumbest thing, the most foolhardy thing a musician can do.

Start a big band.

Well, for one night, anyway. My old friend Bruce Paulson did this for a gig in Alaska, announcing, "this is the first AND last gig of the Bruce Paulson Big Band." And it was, too. This night, April 17, will be a little less stressful. Just an hour and a half, and we'll finish with the Grammy-winning West Side Story arrangement. I'm getting as many of the cats from the session that I can. We'll start with champagne at 7:30, and the band kicks off at 8:30 until 11. Should be fun. If you have a lot of champagne, we'll sound even better.

Future plans? I'm a little bit in transition. I've been writing so much, the piano looks lonesome over there. Gotta go give it some love!! Holly Hofmann and I have a duo, and we have a new record out, and we're going to do more with that. And I'm going to Hawaii in June with my girlfriend, Wanda. We recently celebrated a year together, to the amazement of my friends!

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"A Fireside Chat With Bill Cunliffe"

by Fred Jung
All About Jazz, February 29, 2004
There is a tendency to be indifferent to the familiar - an absence of appreciation with an assumption of the routine. But there is a wisdom in nothing lasts forever. So perhaps, it would behoove us to be grateful that we have musicians locally like Bill Cunliffe (unedited and in his own words), who too yearns for a renewed sense... [go to article]
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