Jazz composer Schneider jumps into classical world

This CD cover image released by ArtistShare shows "Winter Storm Walks," by Dawn Upshaw and Maria Schneider. The CD "Winter....

By CHARLES J. GANS
January 24, 2014 11:40 AM
NEW YORK (AP) — Jazz composer Maria Schneider feels "absolutely giddy" to find herself in new company at the Grammy Awards with her first contemporary classical CD, "Winter Morning Walks" featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw.

Over the past 20 years, Schneider has built a reputation as a leading jazz composer, arranger and big band leader. Her last two CDs won Grammys — "Concert in the Garden" for large jazz ensemble recording and "Sky Blue" for instrumental composition ("Cerulean Skies").

Her achievement is even more remarkable because she was the first artist to win a Grammy for a web-exclusive recording in 2004, using the fan-funding ArtistShare platform.

Her new CD — one of the first fan-funded projects to feature major orchestras — so far has covered nearly half its $200,000 budget from donations ranging up to $10,000 for an executive producer credit.

"Winter Morning Walks," a song cycle based on the poetry of Pulitzer Prize-winner Ted Kooser, has three nominations, including best contemporary classical composition, best classical vocal solo (Upshaw) and best engineered classical album.

Schneider, 53, finds herself nominated alongside such heavyweight contemporary composers as Arvo Part, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Magnus Lindberg as well as Caroline Shaw, whose "Partita for 8 Voices" won the Pulitzer Prize.

"It's such a thrill to be in that company," said Schneider, interviewed at her one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. "It's like I jumped into a whole other fish tank."

The seed for the recording was planted in 2004 when Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov gave Upshaw a copy of "Concert in the Garden." Upshaw instantly connected with the music and began attending Schneider's annual Thanksgiving week gig at the Jazz Standard club.

"I was fascinated with the way she wrote," Upshaw said. "Her music was bursting with real unabashed joy, nothing artificial."

Upshaw, a four-time Grammy winner, eventually came up with "this wild idea" of asking Schneider to compose something for her.

Schneider had not done anything with classical music since college in the early '80s when she felt "terrified" by the classical world's emphasis on atonal music and switched to jazz.
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