Highlights:

• Innovative, highly skilled professional bassist, music director and educator with over 35 years of international performing, leadership and teaching experience.

• Four, five, and six-string fretted and fretless bass, acoustic bass (secondary instruments: guitar, keyboards).

• Extensive performance experience in commercial pop rock, jazz, fusion, afro-cuban, funk, and world music styles.

• Highly proficient with current digital audio workstation technology, including ProTools and Ableton.

• Multi-leveled knowledge and experience within all aspects of the professional music industry in Canada and the USA, including music business, entrepreneurship, career marketing and leadership.

Paul Shihadeh’s career as an electric and acoustic bassist spans over 35 years, with worldwide live and recording accolades in jazz, funk, fusion, R&B and contemporary pop rock. Since moving to the United States from Canada 20 years ago, Shihadeh has enjoyed numerous recording and performance opportunities, including featured appearances at the famed Baked Potato and La Va Lee clubs in Los Angeles with rock fusion band Cosmosquad, Tribal Tech keyboardist Scott Kinsey and guitarist Scott Henderson. Since 2004, he has lived in Las Vegas with his family where he serves as Bassist and Assistant Music Director for Cirque du Soleil’s internationally renowned water show, “O”, created by famed theatrical writer and director Franco Dragone. Before his work at “O'‘, Shihadeh performed as bassist for another Dragone masterpiece. “Le Reve”. Most recently, Shihadeh served as music director for "One Night for One Drop 2019” , where he collaborated with musicians from seven Cirque du Soleil shows, as well as with stage directors, producers, arrangers and sound designers. Highlighting this experience was working closely with world-renowned film composer Hans Zimmer.

Shihadeh was also Lead Instructor of the Rock Academy of the Performing Arts (RAPA) in Las Vegas from 2021 to 2023, where he devised and developed curriculum for all courses, including History of Rock, Masterclass, Contemporary Music Theory, Careers in the Music Business, and Introduction to the Digital Audio Workstation.

Before moving to the United States, Shihadeh lived in his hometown of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where he had the privilege to perform on countless recording sessions, television productions, commercials, and musical theater productions with many of the region’s finest artists, including Senator Tommy Banks, Bob Stroup, and Zappacosta. During this time, he also participated in multiple international concert tours as bassist with platinum selling artist Roger Whittaker.

Shihadeh holds a Master of Music in Music Education from Boston University as well as a Bachelor of Music in Professional Music from Berklee College of Music.