In Her Own Words: Conversations with Composers in the United States

14. Maria Schneider

14 maria Schneider Maria Schneider is known today mostly for her big-band compositions and for leading her own ensemble, the Maria Schneider Orchestra (also known as the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra). Like Toshiko Akiyoshi, Schneider’s band focuses on Schneider’s compositions, to which she adds color by incorporating instruments uncommon to the jazz orchestra, such as the accordion. Schneider differs from Akiyoshi in that her music does not often use the standard jazz forms and may be through-composed or sound programmatic. Nevertheless, she is fine with being called a jazz composer: “It’s the best way to describe what I do. Nonjazz musicians could never play music for my band, so therefore it’s jazz.” At the lourdes Delgado 248 . chapter 14 same time, she recognizes that the boundaries between jazz, classical, Brazilian, flamenco, and other styles of music are becoming increasingly more blended, and Schneider’s own music blurs genres. Continuing to write for her jazz orchestra while accepting new commissions from classical ensembles, she takes much of her inspiration from flying, motion, and dance, and her conducting reflects the fluidity of her works. Born in 1960 in Windom, Minnesota, Schneider was introduced to piano, jazz, and composition at an early age. Disenchanted by traditional composition in college, she was encouraged by a university professor to write for the college big band. She recounts with awe attending a concert in Minnesota by the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra and being enthralled that any person could play her own jazz music in an auditorium and front her own band. Schneider later became the first recipient of the Gil Evans Scholarship established by the trumpeter Herb Alpert in 1993, and she went on to work with Evans as a copyist. Although the influence of Gil Evans can be heard in Schneider’s music, the Maria Schneider Orchestra has developed a unique sound, as they play mostly her own compositions, often inspired by real-life images or experiences. She and her orchestra released their first recording, Evanescence, in 1994. She writes for the specific players in the ensemble, and, although each work is a distinct composition, improvisation plays a large role in her music, as she considers the instrumental solos played in real time to be the unknown compositional element. With the same humility evinced by Jennifer Higdon and Shulamit Ran, Schneider speaks with great respect about the members of her ensemble, valuing them as the musicians who breathe life into her work. She explains that her music is left intentionally vulnerable, allowing the musicians to contribute their part in ways that defy notation. To date, Schneider and her jazz orchestra have received nine Grammy nominations, resulting in two Grammy Awards—one for the recording Concert in the Garden (the first record to win a Grammy with internet-only sales), and the other for her composition Cerulean Skies. Two of her albums, Concert in the Garden and Sky Blue, were named Jazz Album of the Year by both the Jazz Journalists Association and DownBeat magazine Critics Poll. To address the challenge of expenses required to produce an album of big-band music, Schneider collaborated with her friend and business partner Brian Camelio to develop the innovative ArtistShare Web site. ArtistShare is a brilliant, informal, and changing consortium of individuals who can directly commission, fund, and support a piece of an artist’s work. In exchange for varying contributions, a patron receives access to the creative process, inside looks into rehearsals, extra information on the work, and honorable mention. Schneider has commissioned and recorded complete albums using ArtistShare to help pay her large big bands. A life-changing event for Schneider came when she was confronted with breast mArIA SCHneIder · 249 cancer. Through that experience, she discovered that her true calling, her place of center and peace, was to compose. During our conversation, Schneider shares that journey in a particularly honest and personal manner. Today, Schneider is broadening her compositional output, accepting commissions from the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra to write a piece featuring the soprano Dawn Upshaw, and other crossover classical commissions. In addition to expanding her compositional output, the Maria Schneider Orchestra is an active guest at festivals and in famed clubs, and she receives invitations to lead workshop clinics around the world. *** July 2009, at her home in new York City JENNIFER KELLY: You describe your music as a time-orientated art. What do you mean...