Today, we revisit a conversation with 2019 NEA Jazz Master composer, conductor, and arranger Maria Schneider who creates highly original and evocative compositions for her jazz orchestra.
A New York Thanksgiving tradition was a week-long series of performances by the Maria Schneider Orchestra at the Jazz Standard. As we know the pandemic put the performance of live music on hold for over a year, there was no residency in 2020 and sadly, the Jazz Standard has shuttered its location. But happily the Maria Schneider Orchestra has recently returned to the stage performing in late November at New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
Much of Schneider’s music is autobiographical, evoking the Minnesota plains where she was born and raised. She returns to the theme of her childhood in a prairie town again and again; in fact, she’s come to realize that the foundation of her music is her hometown. She finds parts of it magical, and we certainly hear it in her music. Although she’s composed classical work and collaborated with David Bowie, Maria’s musical center remains in jazz. In this podcast, we talk about her connection to jazz (especially to the music of NEA Jazz Master Gil Evans), the ways in which she and the musicians in her band inspire one another, her collaboration with Bowie, and how her deep ties to Windom, Minnesota, translates into mesmerizing music.
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