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Maria’s A Winner & Sonny Is Too
Sometimes in this business, you get so saturated with new music that your ears are paralyzed. The blues to the rescue, including Dexter Gordon singing with his voice, not just the saxophone. We also salute and celebrate Maria Schneider's receipt of a Jazz Masters' Award this spring from the National Endowment for the Arts. The first 2019 segment of our Sonny Rollins retrospective precedes Maria, with the 1951 Dig sessions with Miles. Then we turn reflective at this start of ...
read moreMaria Schneider: On the Road Again
Five time Grammy Award winner Maria Schneider and her eighteen-piece collective, some of the finest musicians on the jazz scene today, is on the road in 2018. All About Jazz spoke to the composer/arranger about her work, her love of music and her involvement and commitment to improve on the Music Modernization Act during a stop-over on the tour. The interview was conducted via telephone. All About Jazz: Good morning, Maria and welcome to Virginia. Maria ...
read moreThem There Eyes & Songs for the New Year
Welcome September and happy New Year! In the first hour, a celebration of songs by Doris Tauber (composer of “Them There Eyes" and “Drinking Again"), followed by artists covering songs by Maria Schneider, and new releases to herald the change of season. Playlist Rachel Z “All I Want" from Moon at the Window (SHRAPNEL (ORCH)) 00:00 Ian Shaw “Chelsea Morning" from Drawn to All Things(Linn Records) 05:08 Claire Martin “Two Grey Rooms" from Time & Place (Linn ...
read moreMolde International Jazz Festival 2018
Moldejazz Festival Molde, Norway July 16-21, 2018 The Moldejazz festival is the second oldest in Europe--it was started in 1961, just one year behind Ljubljana, in 1960--and is still the most important one in Norway. It was here that Keith Jarrett and Jan Garbarek took their first steps in creating the Allentown pianist's “European quartet." It was here too, even earlier, that Garbarek came into contact with George Russell, the composer and pianist from ...
read moreMaria Schneider on "The Thompson Fields"
Maria Schneider is one of the most influential artists on the international jazz scene. Her open minded approach has led her to become a referent as a composer without being tagged to a specific genre. In the jazz panorama, she receives recognition for her impeccable, beautiful and meaningful compositions as well as for her passionate and determined work as a conductor of her orchestra. The Thompson Fields (ArtistShare, 2015) marks the first Maria Schneider Orchestra release in eight years. With ...
read moreMaria Schneider Orchestra: The Thompson Fields
At the time Maria Schneider released Evanescence (Enja, 1994), big band jazz--especially in the US--was overly predictable and indecisively hanging on like ballroom music in a ghost town. Schneider, while embracing the best practices of earlier legendary big band leaders and her mentors, Gil Evans and Bob Brookmeyer, had added unconventional elements to her own compositions. With each release she has become more of an avant-garde impressionist capturing the beauty and sadness of a nomadic soul wandering through what was ...
read moreMaria Schneider Orchestra: The Thompson Fields
The singular achievement of Maria Schneider is to merge the particular with the universal: to use her very personal experiences and memories as grist for music which is aurally beautiful and deeply infused with love. This love originates from Schneider the person and artist; it is amplified and returned by those directly involved in the creation of this work through the ArtistShare process (including those who commissioned “Arbiters of Evolution," “Home" and “Lembranca"); finally, it is received by ...
read moreMaria Schneider Orchestra: The Thompson Fields
It's always interesting to discuss the jazz greats of yesteryear and swap thoughts on how the new generation of artists stacks up against the likes of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington. And it's quite possible that the consensus opinion there would be that virtually no one working today can compare favorably to those iconic figures. But in a much different time, when the artistic offerings competing for our entertainment dollars and attention are vast compared ...
read moreMaria Schneider Orchestra: The Thompson Fields
Composer and band leader Maria Schneider has only a single peer... Carla Bley. Both women are direct descendants of Duke Ellington and the spiritual children of Hector Berlioz. They are not masters of a single instrument, but of collections of instruments and their achievement is realized from directing those instruments in a given direction dictated by their composition and arrangement...just like Ellington. Their compositions are often intricate and expansive, conceived with precision and performed with warmth and organic intelligence. Schneider's ...
read moreMaria Schneider Orchestra: The Thompson Fields
There's a wealth of information to be found inside the beautiful packaging that accompanies this release, but a brief Theodore Roosevelt quote may be the most telling piece of text to be found there. It reads: “There is nothing more practical in the end than the preservation of beauty, than the preservation of anything that appeals to the higher emotions in mankind." That really says it all about this artist and her work, for there is nobody more capable of ...
read moreMaria Schneider: Lembra De Mim
June of 2015 can't come soon enough for fans of the Maria Schneider Orchestra. That month will see the release of the The Thompson Fields--the long-awaited followup to the stunning Sky Blue (ArtistShare, 2007). In the meantime, Schneider has been gracious enough to deliver a pair of bonus tracks to tide everyone over until the album drops: an updated take on “Dance You Monster To My Soft Song," a piece originally presented on Evanescence (Enja, 1994), and her arrangement of ...
read moreMaria Schneider Orchestra at Jazz Standard
Maria Schneider Orchestra Jazz Standard New York, NY November 25, 2014 Thanksgiving is a time to reflect, rejoice, regroup, and remember all that we have to be thankful for. In the jazz world, the Maria Schneider Orchestra always ranks at the top of that last category. For the past decade, the most important large ensemble in jazz has held court at New York's Jazz Standard during Thanksgiving week, delivering the powerful ...
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