“Ol’ BLU Eyes: Sinatra Centennial Celebration” featuring Bill Cunliffe w/ Martin Wind, Joe LaBarbera Grammy® Award-winning jazz pianist, composer, and former Frank Sinatra sideman, Bill Cunliffe, brings all-star trio to Akron to kick off a three-day celebration of Frank Sinatra's 100th birthday at BLU! Featuring Bill Cunliffe, Martin Wind, Joe LaBarbera & special guest vocalist, Mike Cady. Co-presented by Steinway Piano Gallery Cleveland.

Jazz pianist, composer and Grammy® Award-winning arranger Bill Cunliffe is known for his innovative and swinging recordings and compositions. Bill began his career as pianist and arranger with the Buddy Rich Big Band and worked with Frank Sinatra, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Benny Golson and James Moody. He has since established himself as a solo artist and bandleader, with more than a dozen albums under his name.
 
Los-Angeles based Cunliffe currently plays with his trio, his big band, his Latin band, Imaginación, and his classical-jazz ensemble, Trimotif. He performs in the U.S. and around the world as a leader and sideman as well as a soloist with symphony orchestras.
 
His latest recording is the Bill Cunliffe Trio album “River Edge, New Jersey,” with bassist Martin Wind and drummer Tim Horner, released in April by Azica Records.
 
Other recent releases include his Overture, Waltz and Rondo for jazz piano, trumpet and orchestra (BCM+D Records, 2012). Bill performed the work with trumpeter Terell Stafford and the Temple University Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Luis Biava. The recording won Bill his fifth Grammy® nomination, in the Best Instrumental Composition category.
 
Also released in 2012 was his Concerto for Tuba and Orchestra, with tubist Jim Self and the Hollywood Ensemble, with Bill conducting (Metre Records, 2012). Bill’s album of solo improvisations on Christmas carols, “That Time of Year” (Metre Records, 2011), was described as a “tour de force” in the Los Angeles Times.
 
Bill’s other recordings show his affinity for Latin rhythms (“Bill in Brazil,” Imaginación” and his Grammy®-nominated trumpet concerto “fourth stream … La Banda”) and pay tribute to some of his musical heroes, including Bud Powell, Oliver Nelson and Paul Simon.
 
Bill wrote the score for the film “On the Shoulders of Giants,” Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s homage to the Harlem Rens basketball team of the 1920s and ’30s. The movie recently received an NAACP Image Award for Best Documentary. Bill’s soundtrack was nominated for Best Album.
 

“Pianist Bill Cunliffe is one of the Southland’s most versatile musicians. His resume spans big-band playing (with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra) and his own small ensembles to arranging and composing as well as writing a standard book on jazz keyboard….”
– Los Angeles Times

 
He recently completed scoring a film noir by Singaporean director Ying J. Tan and is producing a jazz album for singer Freda Payne.
 
Bill’s books “Jazz Keyboard Toolbox” and “Jazz Inventions for Keyboard” (Alfred Music Publishing) have become standard reference works. His most recent publications are “Uniquely Christmas” (2012), a book of arrangements inspired by his CD “That Time of Year,” and “Uniquely Familiar: Standards for Advanced Solo Piano” (2010).
 
Bill 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). In addition to receiving five Grammy® nominations, he is a two-time Emmy nominee.
 
The Los Angeles Jazz Society honored Bill in 2010 with its Composer/Arranger Award. That year he was also named a Distinguished Faculty Member of the College of the Arts at Cal State Fullerton, where he is a jazz studies professor. He also teaches at the Skidmore Jazz Institute and the Vail Jazz Workshop.
 
Bill grew up in Andover, Mass. He studied jazz at Duke University with pianist Mary Lou Williams and received his master’s degree from the Eastman School of Music. He was the 1989 winner of the Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition.
 

About Martin Wind

Bassist and composer Martin Wind was born in Flensburg, Germany in 1968 and moved to New York in 1996 to study at New York University (NYU) with a scholarship by the German Academic Exchange Service.
 
In 1995 he earned himself a diploma as Orchestra Musician at the Music Conservatory in Cologne, Germany while studying with Prof. Wolfgang Guettler, former bassist with the Berlin Philharmonics.
 
In 1998 he earned his Master’s degree in Jazz Performance and Composition studying with Mike Richmond, Jim McNeely, Tom Boras, Mike Holober and Kenny Werner.
 
Since his move to New York Martin has become a regular at all major jazz clubs and is also in demand as a session player; his credits include movies such as “The Alamo”, “Intolerable Cruelty”, “ Mona Lisa Smiles”, “Fur”, “True Grit” and “The Adventures of Walter Mitty”.
 
In 1995 Martin came in third at the International Thelonious Monk Bass Competition in Washington, D.C.
 
In 1996 Martin Wind won the first Cognac Hennessy/Blue Note Jazz Search in Germany with his trio “Dreikland” and got to record an album for Blue Note Records.
 
In 2000 he was the first Jazz musician to win the Cultural Award of his home state Schleswig-Holstein.
 
Martin has released about 10 albums so far as leader/co-leader including his debut album “Gone with the Wind” (1993), “Tender Waves” (1996), “Dreiklang”(1997), “Family” (1999), “The Soccerball” (2002), “Salt & Pepper” (2007), “Get it?”(2009), “Theresia”(2010) and “MWQuartet – Live at JazzBaltica”(DVD).
 
In 2014 Martin released the album “Turn out the Stars – music written or inspired by Bill Evans” on his newly founded “What if Music” Record Label. The recording features Martin’s current Quartet consisting of Scott Robinson (tenor sax), Bill Cunliffe (piano) and Joe La Barbera (drums), as well as the Italian “Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana” – Paquito D’Rivera called the album “disgustingly beautiful!”
 
Currently Martin is a member of the trios of Bill Mays, Dena DeRose, Bill Cunliffe, Ann Hampton Callaway, Ted Rosenthal, as well as of Matt Wilson’s Quartet “Arts and Crafts”.
Since 2013 he has also been touring with Belgian guitarist and jazz legend Philip Catherine, playing material from their duo album “New Folks”(ACT Records).
 
Martin Wind has recorded and/or performed with the following artists: Guidon Kremer, Christoph Eschenbach, Mstislav Rostopowitch, Lalo Schifrin, Monty Alexander, Pat Metheny, Clark Terry, Mark Murphy, Slide Hampton, Toots Thielemans, Buddy DeFranco, The Metropole Orchestra, Radio Big Bands Cologne, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Berlin, Michael Brecker, Randy Brecker, Eddie Daniels, Curtis Fuller, Phil Woods, Bud Shank, Johnny Griffin, Bucky Pizzarelli, Mike Stern, Larry Goldings, Johnny Mandel, Frank Wess, James Moody, Hank Jones, John Scofield, Sting, Ann Hampton Callaway, Michel Legrand, Mulgrew Miller, Ken Peplowski, Anat Cohen, Benny Green, Vanguard Jazz Orchestra and others.
 
Martin Wind is on the faculty at New York University and Hofstra University; he has taught at the National Youth Jazz Orchestra Germany and the Centrum, Stanford and Litchfield Jazz Camps among others.
 
Martin was commissioned to write music for the American Place Theatre productions of Tim O’Brien’s “The things they carried”(2005) and Jeanette Walls’ “The Glass Castle” (2007). One of his arrangements appeared on the 2014 movie “Love is Strange” feat. John Lithgow and Tony Molina.
 

About Joe LaBarbera

Joe La Barbera has enjoyed a long and varied career in music, a career that has taken him all over the world with some of the finest names in jazz. He is regarded by his peers as a musical drummer and a supportive accompanist. Jazz great Bill Evans summed it up best when he said that “Joe is very dedicated to playing quality music, and he’s willing to make the concessions of dues toward that end. He’s a top soloist and he does the right thing at the right time.”
 
Born in Mt. Morris, New York, his first musical experiences began at home as part of the family band with his parents and two older brothers, saxophonist Pat and trumpeter and arranger/composer John La Barbera. From his father he received a solid foundation in drumming as well as lessons on clarinet and saxophone. His education continued at the Berklee College of Music in Boston where his teachers included John LaPorta, Charlie Mariano, Herb Pomeroy and the great Alan Dawson.
 
After Berklee and two years with the U.S. Army band at Fort Dix, New Jersey, Joe began his professional career with Woody Herman and the Thundering Herd. The Chuck Mangione Quartet followed with gigs ranging from jazz clubs with the small group to symphony halls with full orchestra. Then it was onto New York and a fruitful two-year period of freelancing with Jim Hall, Phil Woods, Art Farmer, Gary Burton, Art Pepper, John Scofield, Bob Brookmeyer and Toots Thielmans to name just a few.
 
In 1978 Joe was asked to join Bill Evans in what was to become a landmark trio. Along with bassist Marc Johnson, the trio grew over a two-year period to become one of Evans’ finest. (see performances of My Romance, In Your Own Sweet Way and Bill’s Hit Tune on YouTube). After Bill’s untimely death in 1980, Joe joined pop singer Tony Bennett.
 
Currently residing in Los Angeles, Joe is involved in a wide range of music locally, nationally and internationally. On the local scene he is busy with his own quintet as well as sideman duties with many well known jazz artists. Recent dates in North America include performances with Bill Mays, Eddie Daniels, Randy Brecker and brother Pat LaBarbera.
 
During the last few years, Joe has toured Europe with Kenny Wheeler, Bassline (with Hein Van De Geyn and John Abercrombie) and the WDR Big Band. Most recently, he toured Japan with Lee Konitz, Europe with The West Coast All Stars and with Karrin Allyson, and South America with Bud Shank.
 
In 1999 along with Tom Warrington, Larry Koonse and Clay Jenkins, Joe created Jazz Compass, an independent recording company dedicated to the kind of creative music that has always been close to his heart. Joe has two releases on Jazz Compass, “Live” (JC1004) and “Mark Time” (JC1437) which was selected one of the top 10 2003 releases in Dr. Herb Wong’s Blue Chip Jazz CD Awards. He is also heard on other Jazz Compass projects including brother John La Barbera’s exciting new big band recordings, “On The Wild Side” (JC1007) and “Fantazm” (JC1011).
 
Since 1993, Joe has been on the faculty of California Institute For The Arts in Valencia, California. He is also a visiting artist at UNLV (Las Vegas), and a faculty member of the Bud Shank Jazz Workshop. In the past he has also served on the National Endowment For The Arts council in Washington D.C. and has been a guest at many other colleges as both performer and lecturer.

$35