Bill Cunliffe Returns September 10

Before he won the 1989 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Award, was nominated for two Emmy awards and a Grammy for composition and won a Grammy this past February for Best Instrumental Arrangement, we knew Bill Cunliffe. You could hear him anchoring the pop/jazz band 'Bout Tyme at the Nite Owl on Fifth Street, watch him teach a generation of jazz musicians at Central State University and start to see him freelancing with the best musicians in jazz at clubs throughout the region. My most vivid memory came in the late summer of 1988 when Cityfolk presented Bill as part of the quintet led by trumpet master Art Farmer that featured the great tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan. Beyond the music--which was superb--those who were there experienced the last of the few Cityfolk jazz concerts presented outdoors in the Italian Cloister at the Dayton Art Institute. Under the stars, in that intimate atmosphere, concertgoers were treated to not only music from the pens of the likes of Ellington and Strayhorn but Farmer and Jordan's own imaginative original tunes.

Cunliffe rocketed out of southwestern Ohio not long after that night and has not looked back. He sits at the center of the active studio recording scene of Los Angeles, keeps an active profile as a performer and educator in New York and on the east coast and is perhaps the most in-demand accompanist for singers now working. He has been at the center of some of the most accomplished big band activity of the past two decades including the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra.

When he performs at Gilly's on September 10 with bassist Martin Wind and drummer Tim Horner, the focus will be on the most important piece in his extensive toolbox: his keyboard skills. He's a consummate pianist; a fleet improviser armed with a remarkably deep repertoire. For longtimers, here's a chance to reacquaint yourself with Cunliffe's magnificent piano playing. If you have not had the pleasure, treat yourself to one of the best.

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.

2010 National Heritage Fellows

In 1982 the National Endowment for the Arts established the NEA National Heritage Awards as a way of honoring American folk artists for their contributions to our national cultural mosaic. The 2010 honorees include a Cityfolk favorite: Del McCoury. Find photos, bios, and some video of these masters at work on the NEA website.

Yacub Addy (pictured here)
Ghanaian drum master
Latham, NY

Jim “Texas Shorty” Chancellor
Fiddler
Rockwall, TX

Gladys Kukana Grace (pictured here)
Lauhala (palm leaf) weaver
Honolulu, HI

Mary Jackson
Sweetgrass basketweaver
John’s Island, SC

Del McCoury
Bluegrass guitarist and singer
Nashville, TN

Judith McCulloh
Folklorist and editor
Urbana, IL

Kamala Lakshmi Narayanan (pictured here)
Bharatanatyam Indian dancer
Mastic, NY

Mike Rafferty
Irish flute player
Hasbrouck Heights, NJ

Ezequiel Torres
Afro-Cuban drummer and drum-builder
Miami, FL

Cityfolk Festival Performer Steps Up to the Big Screen

Cityfolk has presented street dancers at the Cityfolk Festival for the last five years. These dancers specialize in vernacular, urban-born dance styles such as breaking, popping, and locking. While these dance styles received popular media attention starting in the 1970s and 80s, its community of practitioners remains primarily underground. However, a recent resurgence of attention has brought some of these dance styles’ most seasoned practitioners to the Hollywood big screen, and other high profile projects. One of these dancers, Pandora, graced the Cityfolk Festival grounds as a street performer in 2007 and 2008 with her crew, Venus Fly Trap.

Pandora specializes in popping, a robotic style of street dance that was born during the Funk era in the 70's. However, she is perhaps most known for her strong skills in a related style, called tutting, a geometric and Egyptian hieroglyphic-inspired style of street dance involving fast angular hand and arm movements. Pandora has competed in and won various high level dance competitions throughout the US as well as in Europe, Japan, & Canada. She was also presented with an award for "Outstanding Popping Skills" at the Los Angeles Hip-Hop Dance Awards and in 2005 received a standing ovation on Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance".

Most recently, Pandora…

Tutted her way to Hollywood as a featured dancer in Disney's STEP UP 3D (currently playing in theaters near you!). Check out her tutting solo about 30 seconds into the “Red Hook” battle scene:


Appears as her own character "Autumn" in Step Up 3D Director JON. M. CHU'S new original online series "LEGION OF EXTRAORDINARY DANCERS" aka "The LXD",
Episode 3 – Robot Lovestory:


Episode 7 – The Dark Doctor:


Danced all the way to Denmark to star in avant-garde theatrical play "MENNESKE (HUMAN) ROBOT" directed by one of Europe's legendary old school street dancers, STEEN KOERNER.
Pandora’s solo at a promo show at Politiken, Denmark:


Learn more about Pandora by clicking on her name at the start of this post or following her on Facebook.

Spotlight: Bill Cunliffe Trio

Bill Cunliffe can do it all. He's a superb pianist, Grammy-winning arranger, Grammy-nominated composer, first call accompanist to the world's best singers and a gifted educator. Now based in California, he taught at Central State University for years and interfaced with countless musicians in our region before leaving to tour with the big band/orchestras of Buddy Rich and Frank Sinatra. On the heels of his Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement for his arrangement of "West Side Story Medley" on the CD Resonance Big Band Plays Tribute To Oscar Peterson, he will appear at Gilly's on September 10 with bassist Martin Wind and pianist Bill Mays to celebrate his music in a perfect, familiar setting.

There's not much video on the web that features Bill's playing. Instead, check out his blog, which includes his experience while playing in different settings, and an interview.

New Orleans Party with Paul Sanchez & the Rolling Road Show from HBO’s “Treme”

You may not know New Orleans musicians Paul Sanchez, Alex McMurray, Matt Perrine, and Washboard Chaz by name, but if you've been watching HBO's Treme, then you definitely know their songs. The four will be at the Trolley Stop on August 18 with "Paul Sanchez and the Rolling Road Show". This New Orleans party starts at 8:30 pm.

HBO’s Treme--which (in their own words) "chronicles the rebuilding of a unique American culture after historic devastation"--just completed its first season to critical acclaim. David "The Wire" Simon's show has helped to bolster the profiles of several working musicians who continued on in the post-Katrina days. For example Sanchez--well-known in the South as a member of the band Cowboy Mouth--was featured with singer John Boutté on their song "At the Foot of Canal Street" in one episode. The show has been widely recognized as finally being a movie or television production that “gets” what real life is like in New Orleans and the role that music plays in that day-to-day existence.

Sanchez (pictured here) talks about life in New Orleans since Katrina in 2005: “Ultimately what we lost is the same thing many around the world had lost before us and many more have lost since. We lost our illusions, the illusion that we had control over levees, politics, human nature, our careers, our futures, our past. What we have is the present, which is all any of us really have… I lost all that I had but have created so much since, and stripped of my illusions, my songs ring more true to me then ever before, one more step on the road to redemption.”

He continues, “I found out that being a ‘mid-level rock star struggling with the limitations of my own career’, (like the guys in the movie Almost Famous), was not what I had aspired to when I picked up the guitar. I wanted to play and write the best songs I could while I was still on the planet--rock, jazz, country, folk, theatrical, pop, whatever the muse delivers. I found out that I am New Orleans, I love New Orleans…”

The concept of the Rolling Road Show is to feature each of these front men individually and in group sets. Each gets his chance at center stage, and according to Sanchez "…then you basically have a stage full of frontmen who are pretty happy and inspired by what the other people are doing."

The show in Dayton is being supported by sponsors including Cityfolk, CompuNet Clinical Laboratories, Rue Dumaine restaurant, and The Trolley Stop. Tickets are $10 and are available at The Trolley Stop, Cityfolk, and Rue Dumaine. Contact Tom Perlic at 910-0806 for more information.

Have You Heard?

NPR started a series of "Tiny Desk Concerts", which are actually short VIDEOS they record when artists are in their studios for on-air interviews. They offer these intimate performances on their website and in podcast form. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to embed the videos here; please click on one of these great performers to see them live.

Rhythm & blues and gospel singer Mavis Staples

Reggae artist Jimmy Cliff

Soul music steeped in African-American gospel from The Holmes Brothers

Cuban singer Omara Portuondo

Jazz fiddler Regina Carter

Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer and Zakir Hussain on banjo, bass and tabla

Soul singer Bettye LaVette

Still The Corndrinkers: "The Corndrinkers Still"

A mere 13 years after recording its debut album, the Miami Valley’s favorite old-time country stringband has released a follow-up. The Corndrinkers Still, the sophomore album from the Clark County-based quintet, shows that the Corndrinkers are more than ever the masters of their domain—the songs and tunes from what’s called the “Golden Age of Country Music,” the years between 1925 and the early 1940s. To say that the band has grown in the intervening years, and gotten much, much better and deeper in every conceivable way, is probably obvious as well as an understatement, but it’s true. The Corndrinkers Still is one of the best albums of traditional country music I’ve heard in quite a while.

The Corndrinkers—Linda Scutt (fiddle), Barb Kuhns (fiddle), Tom Duffee (banjo), Doug Smith (guitar, dobro) and Al “T-Bone” Turnbull (bass)—have been playing music together for 35 years and it shows, both in the tightness of the ensemble playing and in the sublime groove the band attains with seeming ease. From the earliest days at Carriage Hill Farm and the WYSO Country Jamboree to appearances at the Cityfolk Festival to their annual gig at the Cityfolk contra dances, the Corndrinkers have stayed true to their goal of finding “gems from the long history of country music and giv[ing] them new life.” With nary a personnel change in three and a half decades…surely a record of some kind.

With two superb fiddlers in the ranks, it’s not surprising that the Corndrinkers are tune wranglers of the highest order. Add Tom’s driving yet melodic banjo to the mix, and the Corndrinkers have as potent an instrumental front line as any band now on the circuit. The fiddle tunes come from an interesting variety of sources, some relatively well known—Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith, J.P. Fraley, Western Swing pioneer Cliff Bruner—and some more obscure, like Roger Cooper, Bob Walters and Frank Miller.

The tunes are truly “gems”; my favorites include “Smith’s Reel/Oyster Girl,” “Snowbird in the Ashbank/Sara Armstrong’s Tune,” “Little Brown Hand,” “Old Voile” and a pair of fine new tunes written by Barb Kuhns, “Mona in the Garden” and “Snowy Evening Waltz.” In recognition of the hundreds (if not thousands) of square dances they have played, dance caller Ceal Turnbull joins the band for a rousing version of “Fisher’s Hornpipe,” complete with calls.

Singing is an afterthought for many old-time bands in their pursuit of tune nirvana, but the Corndrinkers honor the vocal side of vintage country music with sterling versions of songs from the Carter Family, the Delmore Brothers, first-generation country songwriter Carson Robison and one of my favorite old Mac Wiseman songs, “I’m A Stranger Here.”

All of the Corndrinkers sing, at least harmonies, but the lead singing duties are shared by Tom, Doug and Linda, with T-Bone singing lead on “Picture on the Wall.” Stand-out cuts include “I’m A Stranger Here” (Tom), “Wabash Blues” (a sweet Doug-Barb-Linda trio) and two songs that showcase an especially appealing Tom-Linda duet, “Waltzing on Top of the World” and “In the Shadow of the Pines.”

To quote the Corndrinkers speaking of the music of the Carter Family, listening to The Corndrinkers Still is like “settling into the comforts of home.” On my last trip to Dayton, my old pal T-Bone hosted my dad and me at a Dayton Dragons game. He gave me a copy of this CD and was interested to hear what I thought of it. Here’s my opinion after a couple of months of listening to it: It’s mighty fine. Everybody who likes real country music should probably buy a copy of this CD. It might be a while until the next one.

As good as the CD is, the group is even better live. Don't take my word for it: they'll be at Canal Street Tavern in Dayton on Friday, August 27 starting at 8:30 pm. Tickets are just $10.