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The Leader of Her Band - WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Leader of Her Band
By MARTIN JOHNSON
August 30, 2007

Due primarily to logistics and overhead, most jazz musicians find it hard to keep a five-piece band together for more than a few months. Maria Schneider, by contrast, has kept her orchestra -- which is an 18-piece and sometimes larger ensemble -- together for 14 years, and it's growing in both popularity and artistry. "Sky Blue" (ArtistShare), Ms. Schneider's latest recording, is her best yet, and Sunday afternoon her band will play at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival in Lenox, Mass.

There are two keys to Ms. Schneider's feat: Her orchestra's sound is unlike that of every other big band in jazz today, and her two most recent albums -- "Sky Blue" and 2005's Grammy-winning "Concert in the Garden" -- were virtually commissioned by her fans.

Most big bands or orchestras derive their sound from two templates: the elegant and debonair swing of such classic ensembles as those of Count Basie and Duke Ellington or the intricate modernist experiments of Stan Kenton and Woody Herman's Second Herd. Ms. Schneider, however, is a disciple of Gil Evans and Bob Brookmeyer. Evans is the impressionistic arranger whose orchestrations for Miles Davis resulted in two of jazz's best recordings, "Sketches of Spain" and "Porgy and Bess" (both Columbia). "Gil's music really touched me," Ms. Schneider says during an hour-long conversation at her Upper West Side home this month. "It's always flowing -- there's air in it." While Mr. Brookmeyer is less well known, his structural innovations have pointed composers beyond the usual style of theme and variations.

Ms. Schneider, now 46, arrived in New York in the early 1980s and became Evans's assistant. His orchestrations "had the textures and depth of classical music, with this element of improvisation," she says. "To me it brought together both worlds in the most natural way."

After Evans died in 1988, Ms. Schneider developed her own orchestra, which for five years, beginning in 1993, played every Monday night at the Greenwich Village nightclub Visiones. It was there that her composing style began to emerge. Ms. Schneider's music is richly chromatic but centered on a particular soloist; most of her musicians have played with her for many years. She employs the different horn sections as well as the wordless vocals of Luciana Souza to create diffuse, watercolor-like swells behind the powerful and distinctive soloists in the band.

Although Ms. Schneider has created one of the most readily identifiable sounds in jazz, she doesn't play an instrument in public. She composes at the piano -- and during our interview she often hops up and runs over to hers to illustrate a particular facet of her work -- but in concert she turns the keyboards over to Frank Kimbrough. Instead of playing, Ms. Schneider conducts her band, and she's a kinetic force on stage, moving constantly as she directs her musicians.

Movement is a big inspiration for the intense Ms. Schneider, who keeps a photograph of the ballerina Sylvie Guillem over her piano. "I don't separate music from the body," she says. "The best music makes your body want to move. The image of flying, or the beauty of watching someone dance and all that extension and line and grace, makes me feel music; seeing birds flying, trees in the wind makes me think of music." During our talk, the discussion of music often drifts to birds, which have fascinated the composer since she was a girl growing up in Windom, Minn., and to Alessandra Ferri's final performances with American Ballet Theater earlier this summer.

Since she lacks a parallel career as an instrumentalist, most of Ms. Schneider's music is the result of commissions. She is also dependent on her band's concerts, clinics in which she teaches and coaches other musicians in her style, and revenue from recordings.

"I love them and I can't stand them," she says of her commissioned work. "I so much want everybody to be happy with the result, and I want me to be happy with the result. But at the end I'm so happy because it made me put myself through the pressure of completing it." Then she laughed. "It's like putting yourself through a garlic press. I would never do that if I wasn't somehow forced into it."

ArtistShare, the label that releases Ms. Schneider's music, is a new concept in recording. Developed by Brian Camelio, it's a business model that enables supporters to participate financially in artistic projects. Fans of Ms. Schneider could preorder the CD and watch various packages of recording sessions or concerts for prices that began at $24.95. The model, which eliminates the costly marketing and distribution functions of a typical record company, has enabled Ms. Schneider to make money from her recordings, a rarity in jazz.

"For me and most jazz musicians, making a record was something that was done to give you exposure. It's not really done to make any money, except for a few pennies somewhere down the road. But my last record through ArtistShare ["Concert in the Garden"] was a very expensive record, and I both recouped my expenses and made that much back. It gave me time to do another record," she says.

"I sort of had an idea that I wanted to start a band, but I didn't think of it as a career," she says of her early days in the music business. "I always thought that the career followed the passion. I never did something because it was a good career move. Starting a big band and keeping it together for many years is not, shall we say, prudent."

She cited the expenses of traveling with a large ensemble, the logistics of working with her musicians' schedules, and the difficulties of assembling her support staff. But the effort pays off.

"I love these musicians. And I love writing music that is highly orchestrated, that has different improvisers. And I love bringing all these people together -- all these different voices -- and being the catalyst for us creating a thing of beauty," Ms. Schneider says. "So, in a way, I didn't choose this career; it chose me."