Bill Cunliffe

Bill Cunliffe ( born June 26, 1956) is an American jazz pianist, composer and arranger.

Life and work

Cunliffe studied at Duke University with Mary Lou Williams. The master's degree he earned at the Eastman School of Music. He taught at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, then toured as a pianist and arranger with the Buddy Rich Big Band and worked with Frank Sinatra. Throughout his career, he also played with Ray Brown, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Benny Golson, James Moody and Joshua Redman. He is currently working with his own trio Imaginacion and in a duo with jazz flutist Holly Hofmann, with whom he has recorded five albums so far. Cunliffe also wrote two books on jazz topics, Jazz Keyboard Toolbox and Jazz Piano Inventions (Alfred Publications), also he published big band compositions and choral music. As a composer and arranger, he worked with orchestras including the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, the Illinois Philharmonic, Reading ( PA) Symphony and the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra. His orchestral works include the three-part Romantic Fantasy for piano and orchestra and Viva Mexico. He teaches as an Assistant Professor of Music at the Esther Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University.

Prizes and awards

Bill Cunliffe won the 1989 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Award and received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. His arrangement for the title Do It Again was nominated for the 2006 Grammy Awards. Cunliffe won with Oscar Peterson's West Side Story Medleyden Grammy in 2010 for Best Instrumental Arrangement. He also won several awards from Downbeat for big band and orchestral compositions.

Disco Graphical Notes

• Rare Connection ( Discovery, 1993) with Bob Sheppard, Clay Jenkins, Bruce Paulson, Dave Carpenter, Peter Erskine
• Bill in Brazil ( Discovery, 1995) with Ricardo Silveira, Oscar Castro- Neves, Elio Cafaro, Marcos Ariel, Alex Acuña
• How My Heart Sings (Tom, 2003) with Bob Sheppard, Bobby Shew, Joe LaBarbera
• Imaginacion (Tom, 2005)
• Blues and the Abstract Truth: Take 2 (Resonance, 2008) with Tom Warrington, Mark Ferber, Bob Sheppard, Brian Scanlon, Jeff Clayton, Andy Martin, Larry Lunetta, Terell Stafford