The Hills Are Alive: Maria Schneider Lets Memory Guide The Music

Maria Schneider's latest album is The Thompson Fields.

Courtesy of the artist

JUNE 14, 2015 5:11 PM ET
Jazz composer and bandleader Maria Schneider has lived in New York for years, but her new album, The Thompson Fields, takes its tone and inspiration from her home state of Minnesota. The Thompsons were farmers and close friends with Schneider's family when she was growing up — and every couple of years, she goes back to visit one of their sons, Tony, on their old family farm.


"Tony and I climbed to the top of his silo," Schneider says of a recent trip. "We were looking out over this vast landscape of fields, and the wind was blowing and it was making these waves of dark and light green ripple across the fields. ... You know, it was kind of this feeling of generations passing, and remembering this sense of community and the friends that are still there, friends that have gone. I was just taken by how rich a community can be in a seemingly very wide-open, almost empty-looking landscape."

read more: http://www.npr.org/2015/06/14/413669338/the-hills-are-alive-maria-schneider-lets-memory-guide-the-music?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20150615&utm_campaign=Music&utm_term=

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.
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/jazz-composer-schneider-jumps-classical-world-164002856.html

Conductor Maria Schneider to work her magic with CU Jazz Ensemble

By Bret Saunders&nbsp

Maria Schneider spends a lot of time traveling the world as a guest conductor of professional and collegiate jazz ensembles. It's her commanding yet animated stage presence that holds much of her appeal: Schneider often gets caught up in the music she is pulling out of the band members and becomes a performer herself, even if she isn't playing an instrument. She has a couple of composition Grammys and a deeply respected slew of independently released CDs. Her writing produces music that is exhilarating and almost cinematic.

And it's Schneider's stature as a visiting bandleader who inspires her students to express themselves through creative music that will bring her to CU's Macky Auditorium on Friday, when she leads the CU Jazz Ensemble I through a series of her pieces.

"When you work with a group you assess what the strong points are," she says about the groups she works with and the degrees of collaborative success. "But in the end, so much depends on their willingness to throw themselves into the music. You can play it perfectly but have it not be a moving experience. Or, it can be not perfect and it can be a powerful experience."

Schneider strives to communicate feelings and to tell stories through her music. Her most recent CD, "Sky Blue," from 2007, is an achievement of sonic imagery. Former mentors/colleaguesGil Evansand Bob Brookmeyer spring to mind in terms of horn arrangements, for example, but Schneider's compositions are freer and more open. It's some of the most optimistic large-group music that's been created in recent decades.

"Sometimes I think people in the jazz world — it's a highly specialized music and it takes years to develop your craft and message — it's easy to become closed in, and you start valuing the complexity more than the message," she says. "My music is not pyrotechnical. It's intricate but not so complex that people don't understand it. I take care that my music is communicating something. The most insulting thing that people can say to me is 'that was interesting.' We learn the technique (of making music) so we can become better communicators."

And lately Schneider has been sharing her skills of musical communication with various student groups, including her work scheduled with the CU students this week, culminating in Friday's performance. She's pleased that there are new generations coming up with an appreciation for big band type settings, with an interest in jazz and its history.

"Here and there you have parents who are obsessed jazz listeners, and there's the matter of exposure through a number of music programs," she says. But Schneider adds that an important part of a student's musical journey is discovery through their own curiosity.

"You're really responsible for your own education. Don't wait for your teachers or professors to spoon-feed you."

Maria Schneider with CU Jazz Ensemble I, 7:30 p.m. Friday, Macky Auditorium, University Avenue and 17th Street, Boulder. Free. Call 303-492-8008 for information.

Read more:Conductor Maria Schneider to work her magic with CU Jazz Ensemble - The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com/music/ci_19309965?source=rss#ixzz1dev6t12r
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

Maria Schneider Orchestra On JazzSet

Photo: Margot Schulman

Maria Schneider conducts at the 2009 Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival. Also pictured: Kenny Rampton (trumpet).

Born Nov. 27, 1960, in Windom, Minn., Maria Schneider celebrates her birthday with her Orchestra every Thanksgiving week at the Jazz Standard in New York. It's always a sell-out — every set, every night.

Schneider put her first New York band together in the 1980s, and it played Monday nights at Visiones, a Greenwich Village club near NYU. People flocked to see and hear this slim, petite, confident newcomer from Minnesota and her handsome band. Visiones would get so full that fans stood on the sidewalk, peering in the windows.

In 1994, Schneider released an album with the name of her mentor Gil Evans embedded in the title: Evanescence. She followed Evanescence with Coming About and the opening track "El Viento," commissioned by the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band. At the time, Schneider told JazzSet, "When I think that, for the rest of my life, I'm going to be trying to figure out what am I going to be writing next, it's kind of scary."

Listen to, on >>  http://www.npr.org/2009/11/05/120096420/maria-schneider-orchestra-in-concert

Complete on  >> http://www.npr.org/2009/11/05/120096420/maria-schneider-orchestra-in-concert?ft=1&f=1039

Maria Schneider Orchestra In Concert

Hear Program on podcast > NPR )right Sidebar)

by Becca Pulliam, JazzSet
November 5, 2009 from WBGO - In the 1990s, Maria Schneider told JazzSet, "When I think that, for the rest of my life, I'm going to be trying to figure out, 'What am I going to be writing next?'' — it's kind of scary." On the occasion of recording this concert from the 2009 Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival, we asked the Maestro to follow up.

JazzSet: Is it still scary? Is it less scary? Or have you become more secure, and worry instead that you will have a shortage of time?
Maria Schneider: You bet it's still scary. The only thing is that I know from experience that somehow, by some mysterious principle that I don't understand, something almost always comes in the nick of time. Deadlines do induce panic and, inversely, inspire me.

JS: As we worked on this edition of JazzSet, I felt like crying every time I heard your introduction. And "Sky Blue," and even the "Cerulean Skies" story and music about birds on a long migration, makes me cry. How do you handle the emotion?
MS: I just put my heart and soul into my music. And sometimes I do cry when I write it, and on occasion I cry when my musicians play it. But more often, I'm balancing a high wire between emotions and intense concentration when writing and when conducting, so in [that] state I often get moved in a different way. The hair stands on end. I get excited, deeply joyful, even if the music is somehow mournful.

JS: Do you still compose at a big drafting table?
MS: I have a huge board at my piano that is almost like a drafting board. I've written that way since 1983, and still don't use computer programs. I have a copyist put my music into a computer to generate parts for the musicians, but I'm still partial to pencil and paper and sketches.

JS: In "Cerulean Skies," who plays the call of the loon?
MS: That's not supposed to be a loon (even if it sounds exactly like one), because loons don't sit in trees in Brazil. I had to imagine there was some bird in Brazil that sounded similar to that. It's [tenor saxophonist] Rich Perry. I guess he should try to be less loon-like. I'll work with him on that, though it might crush him. I think the loon call has possibly become his second love to the tenor sax. Well, then again, maybe not.

JS: For those who don't know what we're talking about, Maria Schneider lives in New York near Central Park, a stop on one of the great migratory flyways of the hemisphere, and she is a dedicated "birder." On May 16, 2009, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., before conducting "Cerulean Skies," Maria shared the narrative (inspired by, but not fully faithful to, real bird migrations) behind the music.
MS: Imagine that we're opening up somewhere in Central America or South America. I prefer Brazil. For the sake of argument, imagine we're in Brazil. We're in a rainforest in Brazil, and you're going to hear a loon — just accept that — sitting in a tree. It opens up; this forest is opening. It's a magnificent morning. It's the joy of the forest. And then, going into Donny's solo, these birds (I could be saying this wrong), the birds' physiology changes. They start eating. They gorge themselves on food. They have to make this long flight. Their feathers start changing, so they get kind of sexually attractive, looking for mates and things like that. So all that sensuality, earthiness, instinct to go north to procreate, is going to come up through Donny McCaslin, and believe me, he's got the goods. (He hates when I say that.) Virility.

And then, at the end of his solo — if you can imagine these flocks of birds — you're seeing them, going up into the sky into a pinprick, small. And then we go into the mind's eye of one warbler. Imagine the black warbler. Some of them go from Peru, 4,000 kilometers without stopping. (That's true, isn't it?) Then they land in the park, exhausted.

Imagine these things: They're navigating by the stars at night, with the thousands of wings fluttering next to them. That's going to be Gary Versace, on the accordion. And then you'll hear us land in the park; that's a chorale from Frank Kimbrough. And then there's just the joy of enjoying these birds that comes through [reed player] Charles Pillow for the rest of the piece. So here is "Cerulean Skies."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120096420

Journey Home- Maria Schneider Orchestra

Maria Shneider Orchestra feat. Luciana Souza, Jeff Balard, Clarence Penn, Jay Anderson, Ben Monder, Frank Kimborough, Tim Ries, Charles Pillow, Rich Perry, Donny McCaslin, Scott Robinson, Keith O'Quinn, Rock Ciccarone, Larry Farrell, George Flynn, Tony Kadleck, Greg Gisbert, Laurie Frink, Ingrid Jensen

Maria Schneider

The Saga of Schneider Maria had beginning in middle of the decade of 80, when it starts to study composition with the trombonist Bob Brookmeyer and starts to be to assist of Gil Evans, being arrived to collaborate with this in the track of the film the Color of the Money and Gil Evans Sting in 1987, in the Europe. Its alone career, however, initiates in 1993 when it forms its proper orchestra and starts if to present all the Mondays in the great Visiones club in Greenwich Village, New Iorque. When recording its first records, Evanescense and Coming About, the critical success of public and was immediate. Its posterior records had relieved it compliments and awardings in the biggest American searchlights: indications the Grammy' prizes; s, nominations in the magazines Jazz Teamses and Downbeat, in the annual lists of the Association of the Journalists of Jazz (Jazz Journalist Award) and in the magazine Teams and rankings of the Billboard.

In podcast I boarding bands of only three records of Schneider Maria: Coming About (1996), Days of Waine and Roses (recorded to the living creature in the club Standard Jazz in 2000) e, finally, I show a band of the Sky Blue (2007), I finish it record that Schneider launched and that, one more time, relieved it two nominations in the Jazz Journalist Wards: The Best Composer and The Best Arranjer, in 2008. In podcast also boarding the fact of that in the decade of 90, Schneider Maria, perhaps, has been in the shade of bandleader and composer Wynton Marsalis, has seen its powerful suítes and oratories that finished relieving it prizes and headings as " One of the biggest North American composers of all tempos" - vide the Pullitzer prize given to the Blood workmanship on the Fields in 1997. But in the decade of 2000, Schneider Maria it was, really, the arrenger greater and orchestra head, breaking there some taboos that the women generally have to face when want to be stars of the jazz front to the marmanjos men and virtuoses. However, if it lacks to the Schneider Maria the imagination of the brilliant writing of Wynton Masalis, the arranger, in turn, obtained even though to show to workmanships of great lyricism and inventividade and vigor in some arrangements, since it obtained to join some of the solistas greaters of New Iorque: among them I detach the trumpetist virtuoso Tim Hagans, the saxophonist Donny McCaslin, Gary Versace, the trumpetist Ingrid Jensen, the Brazilian vocalist Luciana Souza, the drummer Clarence Penn, amongst many other good musicians.

To also remember they are the details of the sound equipment, harmonization and atmosphere that Schneider Maria prints in its sweet parts: in its records it has, for example, bands of great swing and footprint bop (as in the arrangement on the subject Giant Steps de Coltrane), but these contrast with other bands that evidence interpretation, tenuous and lyric (as in Aires de Lando - of the record Sky Blue -, band softly endowed with a Latin lyricism): many times these bands sound almost as one cantábile in proverb, with a musical dynamics that goes of piano to hard, printing, in the passage, several nuances interesting. However, the music of Schneider does not sound melosa to the extremity, but pleasant contemporary sounds and - beyond what, also she has parts where it evidences the interpretation more " psicodelic" and " experimental": as in the first band of " suite" Scenes From.
www.farofamoderna.blogspot.com