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| "From the lustrous opening chords of a Maria Schneider concert, you can feel you are swept off your feet and falling through space - but with the certainty that someone with a lot of emotional intelligence is there to catch you."
-- THE GUARDIAN -- JOHN FORDHAM
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| "...she puts together stories that speak with the clarity of Ernest Hemingway and the musical grace of Aaron Copland."
-- PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW -- Bob Karlovits
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| “Maria Schneider’s orchestral jazz is about feeling. Like Wayne Shorter, she somehow expresses compassion through tones.”
-- NEW YORK TIMES -- Ben Ratliff
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| "She now has become entrenched among the ranks of America's leading composers. ... For Schneider, the question is no longer whether she can sustain the heights she has attained on earlier recordings; it is now how far her musical journey will take her."
-- DOWNBEAT***** -- James Hale
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| “To call Schneider the most important woman in jazz is missing the point two ways. She is a major composer–period.” – TIME MAGAZINE
-- TIME MAGAZINE -- Terry Teachout
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| "Twenty-one musicians of tremendous technical sophistication and emotional energy channel their talents through the direction of the most significant big-band jazz composer of our time."
-- CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR -- Norman Weinstein
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| "It seemed impossible for Schneider top her Grammy-winning Concert in the Garden, but she's done just that with Sky Blue. She has elevated her music to a seemingly impossible height. ... Cerulean Skies” is the masterpiece within a masterpiece, ... Magnificent. A magical work of art, from beginning to end."
-- ALL ABOUT JAZZ -- Dan McClenaghan
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| "Blue, as in "Sky Blue" and "Cerulean Skies," reflects the young colorist's Picasso-like "blue period." Like the symbolic overtones associated with the color itself, Schneider's luminous, azure odes are imbued with mystery and serenity, beauty and truth."
-- HARTFORD COURANT -- Owen McNally
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| "What she does, across the five elegant tracks of Sky Blue, is to create new strands of melody - finely crafted yet tough as steel cable - set within orchestrations that are richly detailed and unhurried, lush but never schmaltzy."
-- THE GUARDIAN -- John L Walters
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| "Plan on wearing out this album [Sky Blue], because you will want to keep listening for deeper insights. All those little digits will eventually get their edges worn off from being played so often."
-- TUCSON CITIZEN -- Chuck Graham
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| "Sky Blue is an album of remarkable depth and beauty—an expansive, imagery laden experience, from an artist who’s ready to be considered in the same breath as those who’ve been so important to her own development."
-- ALL ABOUT JAZZ -- John Kelman
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| "Thanks to engineer Joe Ferla, the sound on Sky Blue is as charming as the music. "What is most personal," Schneider affirms, "can also be what is most universal." Sky Blue is an intimate statement that speaks openly to everyone who appreciates exemplary music."
-- ALL ABOUT JAZZ - Jack Bowers
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| "The disc [Sky Blue] is by far her most ambitious. It is also much more than your father's big band jazz dressed up with classical flourishes. It is integrated, orchestral, composed with specific musicians in mind and among the most arresting, accomplished music of the new century."
-- THE OTTAWA CITIZEN -- Doug Fischer
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| "The best album of 2004, by a wide margin, was Maria Schneider's Concert in the Garden (ArtistShare). Critics need to be careful not to mistake taste for trend, so I'm not sure how much to make of it that both this and Wayne Shorter's Alégria, my favorite from 2003, are Spanish-tinged. But this is unmistakably a step ahead for Schneider, whose voicings are as pellucid as any by her mentor Gil Evans, and whose touch, like Ellington's, is evident even in her sidemen's improvised solos."
-- VILLAGE VOICE -- Francis Davis
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| Let's cut to the chase: I LOVE THIS ALBUM. This is the most lush, lovely collection of music my ears have indulged in for quite some time. There's gorgeous writing; inventive, original, and captivating arranging, and a sympathetic cast of soloists and players.
-- Jack Skowron -- THE AUDIOPHILE VOICE
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| "Schneider brought her Jazz Orchestra to Disney Concert Hall on Wednesday with a program defining her unique style, its multiple pleasures, and its importance to contemporary jazz. …Schneider led her ensemble with graceful gestures, the subtleties of her conducting movements clearly bringing extraordinary layers of dynamic intensity to the performance. Like the music of her most obvious predecessors -- Duke Ellington and Gil Evans -- Schneider's reaches toward a significant new level of imagination, making hers the first truly novel approach to big jazz band composition of the new century."
LA TIMES: Don Heckman
-- LA TIMES: DOn Heckman
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| "Maria Schneider is both painter and aural poet..."
-- ALL ABOUT JAZZ -- R.J. DeLuke (Troy, NY Concert)
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| "With her third album, Allegresse, Schneider... has painted her masterpiece. ...This very well could be the finest jazz album of the year..."
-- BILLBOARD MAGAZINE
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| "If anyone is passing out awards for new American music, he should consider composer Maria Schneider."
-- THE NEWS AND OBSERVER (Raleigh, NC)
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| "Schneider has clearly learned Lester Young's gentle advice for those mining the Jazz tradition: 'You got to be original, man.'"
-- JAZZTIMES
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