AUDIOPHILE AUDITION
by Jeff Krow
Beyond categorizations...simply sublime...
You don’t listen to CDs from the Maria Schneider. You “experience” them. Much like the orchestral jazz of Bob Brookmeyer, it is hard to categorize Maria’s intense, sublime compositions. A close enough description is that they are a hybrid bridging classical, world folk, and jazz. Their beauty to me combines Aaron Copland’s classical Americana with the best of big band jazz.
The theme of The Thompson Fields is her love and appreciation for her childhood home in rural southwest Minnesota. Inspired by the landscape and the flora and fauna of the area, Maria composed the eight tracks on this CD. An added bonus to the exquisite music is the 70 page book that holds the CD. There are gorgeous photographs of the farm area, as well as Audubon paintings of the native birds. Maria gives extensive descriptions of each track and her inspiration for the music within.
The opening track, “Walking by Flashlight” features an achingly beautiful alto clarinet solo by Scott Robinson. The composition was inspired by poet, Ted Kooser’s “Winter Morning Walks.?? Frank Kimbrough’s piano blends with clarinet to transform the listener to a reverie that takes you to a prairie field with a soft wind blowing the reeds. “The Monarch and the Milkweed” is dedicated to the monarch butterfly’s attraction to the native milkweed plant as a place to lay her eggs. Marshall Gilkes and Greg Gisbert solo on trombone and Flugelhorn, and their burnished brass increases in intensity as the track progresses spurred on by Clarence Penn’s drumming.
Maria’s love for birds takes us temporarily out of the heartland to New Guinea where the live rituals of the birds-of-paradise bring fascination on “Arbiters of Evolution.” The full orchestra’s powers are harnessed here. Donny McCaslin on tenor and Scott Robinson, now on tenor, take lead. We’re in full jazz mode here. The title track follows and guitarist Lage Lund opens with a guitar solo that calms and inspires. It brought to mind for me the mood that Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden elicit on their duo work, but here supported by woodwinds and brass, and the piano (of Frank Kimbrough).
The concept of “home” is explored on a composition with the same name. Maria honors the jazz impresario, George Wein, whose Newport Jazz Festival is one of the longest tenured jazz festivals in the world. Maria had the premiere of “Home” debuted at Newport. Rich Perry’s tenor sax solo is striking, and sets a mood that combines both melancholy and joy.
“Nimbus” has as its inspiration the Midwestern landscape that can be bleak and drab, but capable of dramatic weather changes that elicit awe. Steve Wilson on alto sax, digs in and blows with an intensity of an F2 tornado. “A Potter’s Song” is dedicated to trumpeter, Laurie Frink, a long term member of the orchestra, who passed away from cancer in 2013. In addition to her trumpet skills, Schneider also greatly admired her skills as a potter. Gary Versace, who has brought the accordion front and center back into jazz as a lead instrument, adds a “gypsy” quality to the track before Keith O’Quinn on trombone makes a tender entrance. Versace returns and takes the melody out.
See full articleWhen you hear "American Crow" trumpeter Mike Rodriguez and "A World Lost" guitarist Jeff Miles against the direly dramatic backdrop and darting heft of the Maria Schneider Orchestra, it's a chattering conversation of feeling blues and seeing reds. Yet there's beauty when those reds and blues are mingled into something purplish and gorgeously epic. link to full article
- JAZZTIMES – A.D. AmorosiThis new EP, expansive enough to rival a full-length release, arrives not as a minor statement but as a fully formed meditation. ... In the slow arc of its harmonies and the lift of its final ascent, the music leaves behind not just resonance, but room, room to reflect, to question, to feel the air shift overhead. Read full article translated from French to English
- Paris-Move – Thierry De ClemensatSome protest music needs to scream in order to make its point. This is at the other end of the spectrum: a protest music that, by making its point through a demonstration of humanity, is no less eloquent. read full article
- TheBlueMoment.com – Richard Williams“Data Lords” . . . is her magnum opus, a riveting, remarkably intense double album, as profound as modern-day instrumental music gets. Link to article
- MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE – Jon BreamNow it's finally here, in the form of a magnificent double album, Data Lords . . . it parses into thematic halves, "The Digital World" and, as an antidote, "The Natural World." On the whole and in the details, it amounts to the most daring work of Schneider's career, which sets the bar imposingly high. This is music of extravagant mastery, and it comes imbued with a spirit of risk. Link to article
- NPR.com – Nate Chinen“The Digital World” emerges as her manifesto against everything that limits the expressive range of the human spirit. “The Natural World” becomes a summarizing afterword in Schneider’s musical autobiography that illustrates the natural forces that keep her creative compass pointing true north. Link to article
- The Arts Fuse –– Allen MichieData Lords: Schneider’s craft and judgment are such that music in the eerie, dystopian world has the marvellous feeling for structure, pacing and often sheer beauty that listeners who know Schneider’s music will be expecting. . . .
There are instrumental glories throughout this album, but the work of the low brass both as section and as individuals is quite unbelievable and is caught exceptionally well on the recording. Whereas Wagner once said “don’t look at the trombones, it only encourages them", I had the sense that Maria Schneider must keep looking at the trombones a lot. And they certainly deliver here. Link to article
- TheArtsDesk.com – Sebastian ScotneyWith Data Lords – a steeliness and even bleakness now shares a stage with her familiar pastoral side. . . . The inner tensions behind this compelling session promise a revealing new phase in Schneider's remarkable work. Link to article
- THE GUARDIAN – John FordhamBeyond the dualism in its format, Data Lords is a work of holistic creativity. The music of outrage and critique in the first album has all the emotion and conceptual integrity that the music of melancholy and reverence does in the second. I can’t conceive of anyone else creating this music, unless Delius has been writing with Bowie on the other side. Link to article
- THE NATION – David HajduData Lords: Disc One offers highly imaginative, revelatory, at times breathtaking music as in the title track. . . . Expect this project, at a minimum, to be a Grammy contender with perhaps historic recognition in the wings at some point. Link to article
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The Thompson Fields: “... this magnificent, nature-drunk masterpiece, one of the great jazz records period, not just one of the great recent jazz records.”
- THE BUFFALO NEWS – Jeff SimonMaria Schneider wanted to send a strong message about the threat of a mass manipulation of humanity with Data Lords. Through her high standard for meticulous composing and arranging, delivered by some of jazz’s best musicians, she gets the message across in perhaps the grandest way possible.
- SomethingElseReviews.com – S. Victor AaronThe Thompson Fields: ***** "...there is nobody more capable of harnessing emotions in music and projecting and preserving the beauty and power of the natural world in sound than Maria Schneider. She's demonstrated that time and again, and she does it once more on this awe-inspiring release."
The Thompson Fields: "This marriage of sounds, words and images is ultimately breathtaking, a testament not simply to the hipness of jazz but to the uplifting and sustaining powers of art."
- OTTAWA CITIZEN – Peter Hum
