Performance
Times
- Thursday, February 19, 2004 at 7:30 PM. Following the performance Ms. Schneider will hold a Q&A session.
- Thursday, March 18, 2004 at 8:00 PM
- Thursday, April 29, 2004 at 8:00 PM. Pre-concert talk at 6:45 PM (with Maria Schneider and Bob Brookmeyer).
- Thursday, June 17, 2004 at 8:00 PM (presented in association with JVC Jazz Festival – NY)
For information
on ordering tickets, go to the tickets page
of this website.
"To call
Schneider the most important woman in jazz is missing the point in
two ways. She’s a major composer -- period."
- Terry Teachout, Arts Critic
"…Schneider’s
music is like no other in the jazz world.”
- Los Angeles Times
"Schneider’s
big band paints musical landscapes full of glowing pastel harmonies
and sharp-angled rhythms. Listen to her sweepingly ambitious
compositions, and hear the next wave in jazz taking shape before your
very ears.”
- TIME Magazine
Biography
Maria Schneider, born in Windom, Minnesota, was studying music by
age five. She earned a Bachelor of Music degree in theory and composition
at the University of Minnesota, studied at the University of Miami,
and received a Masters degree from the Eastman School of Music. After
moving to New York City, she received a National Endowment for the
Arts grant to study composition with Bob Brookmeyer. In 1985, she
became an assistant to Gil Evans.
At the 1993 Spoleto
Music Festival and the 1996 JVC Jazz Festival (New York), Ms. Schneider
conducted the Gil Evans Orchestra in a concert of selections by Gil
Evans. In 2000 she conducted both "Porgy and Bess" and "Sketches
of Spain" at Carnegie Hall featuring Jon Faddis. In 1994, she
was commissioned to write music for and conduct concerts with Toots
Thielemans and the Norrbotten Big Band (Sweden).
She has also conducted
the Stockholm Jazz Orchestra, the Brussels Jazz Orchestra (Belgium),
the Danish Radio Big Band, Ochestre National de Jazz (Paris), the
Stuttgart Radio Orchestras (Germany) and many others in concerts of
her music as well as for various television and radio broadcasts.
In 1994, Ms. Schneider conducted the Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra
at Carnegie Hall in the commissioned premier of "El Viento."
She was commissioned
to compose "Scenes from Childhood", premiered by her own
orchestra at the 1995 Monterey Jazz Festival. Ms Schneider was the
recipient of a Doris Duke award to compose a dance work for the Pilobolus
dance group. The project was premiered at the American Dance Festival
in June of 1998. Ms. Schneider placed in several of the Downbeat
and Jazztimes Critics and Readers Polls.
Ms. Schneider’s
debut recording Evanescence on the Enja label, was nominated
for two 1995 Grammy Awards: Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance and
Best Instrumental Composition. She was a nominee for Copenhagen’s
JAZZPAR Prize in 1995.
She presently
has two new recordings, Allégresse (Enja Records), and
Days of Wine and Roses, a live-recording that is packaged with
two bottles of "Maria Schneider" Riesling wine.
TIME magazine
listed Allégresse as one of the top ten music releases
of the year 2000; it was also nominated for a Grammy.
back
to top
Maria
Schneider directs her 17-piece modern jazz orchestra in an exciting
NEW series of four evenings of incomparable compositions at The Kaye
Playhouse at Hunter College, including a world premier work commissioned
by Hunter College to celebrate the first concert in the series.