School of Rock
Random article All articles A–Z
2 languages

Maria Schneider

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Maria Schneider was born in 1960 in Windom, Minnesota. She studied composition at the University of Minnesota and the Eastman School of Music. She then became a copyist and assistant to Gil Evans, with whom she worked on music for a tour with Sting and on the film score of The Color of Money. She also studied with Bob Brookmeyer. In 1992 she founded the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra, which from 1993 played every week at Visiones in Greenwich Village. Their first album, Evanescence, was released in 1994.

Music and breakthrough

Her orchestra has won several Grammys. Concert in the Garden (2004) was the first album to win, and the first to be made through ArtistShare, a platform on which fans fund the production. The Thompson Fields and Data Lords followed, and Schneider herself received Grammys for individual pieces on Sky Blue and Data Lords. On Winter Morning Walks (2013) she works with the soprano Dawn Upshaw, chamber orchestras and poems by Ted Kooser.

Influence

Schneider writes for a large jazz band, but her work sounds more like orchestral music with improvisation than like a traditional big band. She is also an outspoken advocate for the rights of musicians and speaks out against streaming models and big data companies, which she also worked into titles such as Data Lords. This makes her one of the best-known voices of the contemporary big band.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to Cerulean Skies and notice how the orchestra sounds like one great palette. Can you hear how the soloist rises above the broadly worked-out accompaniment, as if you were looking at a landscape?

Discography

Studio albums

Mentioned in other articles

Categories: ArtistsBig band