Bill Cunliffe

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William Henry Cunliffe Jr. (born June 26, 1956), known professionally as Bill Cunliffe, is an American jazz pianist and composer.

He has written books on jazz for Alfred Publications and has taught at California State University, Fullerton.

Early life

Cunliffe was born in Andover, Massachusetts. He discovered music at an early age, with particular emphasis on classical music as well as jazz-oriented music from the 1960s and 1970s: "My mother was a good pianist...I started just copying little things that I would hear my mom play and I would sit next to her and listen.

Cunliffe described himself as having been drawn to "anything with hip harmony in it" with great melodies, and he loved listening to The 5th Dimension, Burt Bacharach, and Herb Alpert. He attended Phillips Academy and graduated in 1974 in the school's first co–educational class. In college, he performed rock and roll at the Prince Spaghetti House in Saugus, Massachusetts. He attended Wesleyan University for several years. During this time, a friend introduced him to a record by Oscar Peterson, and after listening to this record, Cunliffe became a "jazz player overnight." While in school, he considered careers in medicine and psychology, but in his junior year, he decided finally that "music was it."

After graduating from Duke University, where he studied with jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams, he received his master's degree from the Eastman School of Music.

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Career

Cunliffe taught music at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, for two and a half years. He performed with the Buddy Rich Big Band as pianist and arranger, and with major recording artists, including Frank Sinatra. He returned to Southern Ohio for a few years, as the "house pianist" at the Greenwich Tavern in Cincinnati, with Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Benny Golson, and James Moody. He moved to Los Angeles in 1989 and shortly after winning the 1989 Thelonious Monk Jazz Piano Competition, judged by pianists Hal Galper, Ahmad Jamal, and Barry Harris, Jr. Cunliffe appeared on Buell Neidlinger's "Thelonious" occasionally, and he and the Clayton Brothers Quartet formed the Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra and the Clayton Brothers Quartet in 1990, releasing a number of albums with them on the Qwest, Capri, and Fable labels. He performed in tandem with jazz flutist Holly Hofmann, who appeared regularly with her on the Capri and Azica labels, as well as on "Live at Birdland," with the great bassist Ray Brown. Cunliffe released three jazz albums on Warner/Discovery Records, including Bill in Brazil during a brief stay in Rio de Janeiro that was well received. Satisfaction, a solo piano outing, Live at Rocco, with his sextet, and Partners in Crime, a Hammond B3 session with guitarist Jim Hershman and drummer Jeff Hamilton, are among the albums on display for Azica Records. In 2000, he held a sextet session of Earl Zindars' music, and in 2001 Cunliffe narrated his work with guitarist Darek Oleszkiewicz and former Bill Evans drummer Joe LaBarbera, whose debut was on CD and vinyl, focusing on his collaboration with bassist Darek Oleszkiewicz and former Bill Evans drummer Joe LaBarbera. Cunliffe has been a member of LaBarbera's quintet, which includes saxophonist Bob Sheppard and trumpeter Clay Jenkins, and has had a number of well-received albums on the Jazz Compass label, including saxophonist Bob Sheppard and trumpeter Clay Jenkins virtually since its inception in the early 1990s.

Cunliffe has always loved Latin music, and he compiled his Latin octet Imagination, which debuted at No. 1 in 2003. In national radio jazz charts, there are 2nd in the country's top jazz charts. A sequel to this album is due to be released. He is a Baldwin Pianos artist and appeared on Marian McPartland's famed Piano Jazz radio show in 1998.

At the Playboy Jazz Festival in Hollywood, California, Cunliffe conducted the Resonance Jazz Orchestra. In selections from the Resonance Jazz Orchestra Plays Tribute to Oscar Peterson CD, he accompanied the outstanding Romanian pianist Marian Petrescu. Cunliffe's big band, which performed at Vitello's jazz club in Los Angeles in 2013 for a scheduled 2014 release, has more appearances. Kendor Music, and Otter Music have both published his big band works.

Cunliffe wrote a number of educational journals in the 1990s. Alfred Publications' book Jazz Keyboard Toolbox was released by Alfred Publications and became a standard reference in jazz. Then came a MAX Blues Keyboard, a beginning blues piano, as well as Alfred. He then released Jazz Inventions for Keyboard, short pieces in the Chopin Preludes and Bach Inventions style, as well as a accompanying audio CD. He has released Uniquely Familiar, a book of through-composed jazz standards, as well as a related collection titled "Uniquely Christmas."

He has performed many works for big band, orchestra, chamber groups, and choir, as well as the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra, The Illinois Philharmonic, the Reading Symphony, the Rio Hondo Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Reading Symphony, the Rome School of Music Orchestra, the Temple University, and the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra. He has written extensively for television and film, including the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar-produced film On the Shoulders of Giants (2011), which was nominated for several NAACP awards.

La Banda (2010) was nominated for a Grammy in that year, and he performed by Luis Biava at Verizon Hall in Philadelphia and Alice Tully Hall in New York City. His three-movement piano concerto Overture, Waltz and Rondo, was inspired by jazz and classical music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's music; this work was also nominated for a Grammy in 2012. In 2011, Cunliffe, the legendary Los Angeles studio and orchestral tubist Jim Self, produced a tuba concerto. Cunliffe filmed this film with the Hollywood Ensemble at East/West Studios in Hollywood. On the Metre Records release, he also recorded a piano and tuba version of the work; both versions are mixed. In late 2012, Temple University commissioned another concerto from him; he took a chamber piece based on Brazilian subjects and turned it into a three-movement saxophone concerto with Biava, the Temple orchestra, and the great saxophonist Dick Oatts. The Cunliffe Symphony #1, dedicated to trumpet pedagogue Mark Garrabrant, was performed by trumpeter Kye Palmer and the Cal State Fullerton Wind Ensemble in 2013 by Mitchell J. Fennell.

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