Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

SCHNEIDER, Maria

(b 27 November 1960, Windom MN) Pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader; a talented woman who consoles us for the loss of Gil Evans. Studied piano and theory from age five; attended universities, then the Eastman School of Music; studied in NYC with Bob Brookmeyer '85 and was Evans's assistant '85-8, forming her own band '89 (at first in partnership with trombonist John Fedchock) and playing weekly in Greenwich Village since '93. She paid 17 players to turn up on Monday nights at Visiones (Monday night being everybody's night off as a rule), as Thad Jones and Mel Lewis did before her; it's the only way for a big band to keep its hand in nowadays. She had also worked for Lewis and for Woody Herman; radio orchestras in Europe have played her music (too bad there aren't any radio orchestras in the USA), also the Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra '94 and at the Monterey Jazz Festival '95.

She hates commercial work and cannot do it, but gets commissions from the European radio bands. People ask her if she sings with the Maria Schneider Jazz Band, she laughs; she doesn't even play with it, but writes the music and conducts it. Her albums on Enja use a conventional big-band lineup but her own colours and structures: Evanescence '93, Coming About '95.