William Cunliffe
About
Bill Cunliffe is a jazz pianist, composer and Grammy Award-winning arranger. The 1989 winner of the Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition, he performs around the world as a leader and sideman and as a soloist with symphony orchestra.
Cunliffe was awarded a Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement for “West Side Story Medley,” on the album “Resonance Big Band Plays Tribute to Oscar Peterson” (Resonance Records, 2009).
Cunliffe has more than a dozen albums under his name. “That Time of Year” (Metre Records, 2011), an album of solo improvisations on Christmas carols that was described as a “tour de force” in the Los Angeles Times.
Cunliffe’s film-scoring work includes the score for “On the Shoulders of Giants,” Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s award-winning documentary about the Harlem Rens basketball team of the 1920s and ’30s.
In addition to his work as jazz studies professor at Cal State Fullerton, Cunliffe teaches at the Skidmore Jazz Institute and the Vail Jazz Workshop.
I teach differently to each student, taking an interest in their individual background and interests. However, I believe in fundamentals, knowing how to play the instrument technically, knowing the language of jazz, both from the framework of how to create musical lines and voicings, and to understand the stylistic concepts of the great jazz masters.
BA in Music, Duke University, MM in Jazz Studies, Eastman School of Music. Professor of jazz studies at Cal State Fullerton, teacher at the Skidmore Jazz Institute and the Vail Jazz Workshop.
You don't have to buy any books. It's all up there on the internet.
But there are great texts by Bill Dobbins, Mark Levine and myself. www.billcunliffe.com