Artist Interviews

Summer's winding down and school starting up...must be time for Cityfolk's Concert Season to get underway. And indeed, our first concert is just two weeks away. The Bill Cunliffe Trio will kick things off with Jazz at Gilly's on Friday, September 10. A month later oud and violin virtuoso Simon Shaheen will return with an evening of Arab music at the Dayton Art Institute on October 21 sponsored by the Dayton Arab American Forum.

Unfamiliar with these two artists? No worries...here is an interview with Bill Cunliffe from April, 2010 in which he talks about his weekly schedule and being nominated for a Grammy. In this 2004 fireside chat by Fred Jung at All About Jazz, Cunliffe talks about his early influences, listening pleasures, and the state of Jazz in Los Angeles.

Learn more about the musical differences between Eastern and Western music, and ways that Shaheen merges the two in his composing in this NPR interview with Simon Shaheen. Musical samples are interspersed with the questions which help deepen the understanding of the points he makes.