TRIMOTIF
Performers
David Shostac
// flute
David Shostac's solo performances throughout the continent have included the Hollywood Bowl, Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, Aspen Music Festival, Stratford (Ontario) Festival, the Carmel Bach Festival, and many others.
In his many years as principal flutist with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Aspen Music Festival, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and New Orleans Symphony Orchestras, he has been a frequent soloist with the world's great musicians.
A former member of Leopold Stokowski's American Symphony Orchestra, Shostac has also performed with the Boston Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In recital, he has collaborated with Jean Pierre Rampal, Roberta Peters, Victoria de los Angeles, Julius Baker, and many others.
Recipient of a masters degree from Julliard, where he studied on scholarship, prize winner in major competitions, performer on hundreds of motion picture and television scores, and soloist on recordings for Angel, Columbia, Nonesuch, Sony Classics, Crystal, Excelsior, and Resort Classic, Shostac is presently on the faculties of California State University at Northridge and the Henry Mancini Institute.
His newest recording, Johann Sebastian Bach: the Six Flute Sonatas, with harpsichordist Igor Kipnis, has just been releasted by Resort Classic. www.davidshostac.com
Chris Bleth
// oboe
Chris Bleth is known by film and TV composers in Hollywood as the player to hire to cover multiple woodwind instruments in a variety of styles from classical oboe to Dixieland clarinet to Armenian duduk. Mr. Bleth plays oboe, English horn, flutes, clarinets, saxophones, recorders, duduk, penny whistle, American Indian flute, ditze, bansuri, panpipe as well as other world winds.
Chris is a member of the oboe section of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and has played oboe, bass oboe and English horn with Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Pacific Symphony, Camerata Pacifica, Long Beach Symphony, Pasadena Symphony, Los Angeles Opera, San Francisco Ballet and American Ballet Theater. He was also a soloist with the Santa Cecelia Orchestra in Rome, the Orchestra Sinfonica de Chamartin in Madrid and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra in Denver.
Chris studied woodwinds with Phil Sobel and was a founding member with Sobel of the West Coast Sax Quartet which recorded 3 albums and performed throughout California as well as New York City and Tokyo.
Having studied duduk with the world renowned Djivan Gasparyan, Chris has had the unique opportunity of being featured on this ancient Armenian instrument in the films “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” and in the new “Battlestar Gallactica” television show.
Phoebe Ray
// bassoon
Phoebe has performed throughout Southern California on bassoon and contra bassoon with numerous ensembles including the Pacific Symphony, Pasadena Pops Orchestra, Burbank Symphony, Long Beach Opera, Long Beach Municipal Band, Santa Barbara Symphony, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, American Ballet Theater and Joffrey Ballet Orchestras, in addition to summers at Ojai Music Festival and Cabrillo Music Festival.
She has been active in chamber music with the ProDRoMes Ensemble, the Cal State Long Beach Faculty Quintet, the Westwood Quintet, Trimotif, in jazz ensemble with Doug MacDonald's Brass and Woodwind Coalition, and has appeared as a featured soloist with the Gettysburg Chamber Orchestra performing Weber's Bassoon Concerto and Vivaldi's Concerto in E Minor.
Collaborations with composers include the LA Composers Guild, the American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers, the Schoenberg Institute, and in film and commercial recording.
Before moving to Southern California in 1983, Phoebe was a member of the Columbus Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Chesapeake Opera, and Annapolis Symphony and has performed with the Baltimore Symphony.
Phoebe is a graduate of Peabody Conservatory of Music and the Eastman School of Music where she studied bassoon with Philip Kolker and K. David van Hoesen. Phoebe has also studied jazz piano with Bill Cunliffe.
Bill Cunliffe
// piano/composer
After Bill Cunliffe won several Down Beat Awards as an Eastman student, he taught at Central State University, in Wilberforce, Ohio. His first major gig was pianist andarranger with Buddy Rich, touring Europe with Frank Sinatra. He later performed with Ray Brown, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Art Farmer, Woody Shaw and James Moody.
Bill was the 1989 winner of the $10,000 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Award, and has received stipends from the National Endowment for the Arts. He recently won a jazz composition competition sponsored by the American Composers Form in Philadelphia. His books “Maxx Blues Keyboard,” ”Jazz Keyboard Inventions” (available 2006) and "Jazz Keyboard Toolbox, " are published by Alfred Publications, his big band compositions are published by Kendor Music and the University of Northern Colorado Jazz Press, and his choral music by Santa Barbara Music Publishers. Bill was Marian McPartland's guest on her famed "Piano Jazz" radio show in June '98.
Cunliffe has released a dozen CD’s as a leader. His latest, which spent a month in the #2 position in the JazzWeek radio polls is “Imaginacion” an album featuring his Latin Jazz Nonet, on Torii Records.
As a composer/arranger, Bill has been nominated both for an Emmy and a Grammy, and has composed extensively for big band, chamber groups, choir and orchestra. Recently his compositions and arrangements have been played by the Illinois Philharmonic, the San Diego Symphony, the Pasadena Pops Orchestra, the Reading (PA) Symphony and the New Zealand School of Music Symphony Orchestra. According to the Wellington (NZ) Times, Bill’s recent concert at the Wellington Jazz Festival was "Best jazz piano since Oscar Peterson." The BBC Review recently said that "Bill Cunliffe is one of the great players of the day." The Atlanta Jazz Journal gave his album “A Rare Connection” five stars.
He currently plays with the Clayton Brothers Quintet, trumpeter Terell Stafford, and in duet with the renowned flutist Holly Hofmann, in addition to his own projects. He teaches at the Henry Mancini Institute, the Vail Jazz Institute, and the Skidmore Jazz Institute, and is Assistant Professor of Jazz Studies at the Esther Boyer College at Temple University.
