Maria Schneider

Maria Schneider (born November 27, 1960, Windom, Minnesota, U.S.) is an American composer and conductor who was instrumental in revitalizing the popularity of big band music in the 21st century by enlivening modern classical arrangements with unique melodies written to the strengths of the musicians within her ensemble—works that she often referred to as jazz chamber music.

Schneider began to study piano and music theory with a jazz pianist when she was five years old, and by the age of eight she had penned her first composition. She also tried her hand at playing the clarinet and the violin but decided that performing was not to her liking. After attending a staging of Jerome Robbins’s ballet Fancy Free (with music by Leonard Bernstein) by American Ballet Theatre, Schneider was inspired to become a composer. She earned (1983) a B.A. degree in music theory and composition from the University of Minnesota and received (1985) a Master of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, New York, where she studied jazz and contemporary composition.

Shortly thereafter Schneider won a National Endowment for the Arts grant to study (1986–91) composition with jazz composer-arranger and noted trombone player Bob Brookmeyer, one of her most-significant mentors, who gave her the opportunity to write for such ensembles as the Thad Jones–Mel Lewis Orchestra and for groups at such renowned venues as the Village Vanguard jazz club in New York City’s Greenwich Village. During that time Schneider also worked with jazz composer-arranger and bandleader Gil Evans as his copyist and occasional ghost composer on such projects as the music for the film The Color of Money (1986) and for musician Sting’s 1987 European tour.

In 1992 she formed the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra, which recorded (for the Enja label) the Grammy Award-nominated album Evanescence (1994) as a tribute to Evans. Throughout the 1990s the orchestra toured, performing frequently at music festivals throughout the United States and Europe, and continued to record for Enja, notably Coming About (1996), the critically acclaimed Allégresse (2000), and the limited-edition Days of Wine and Roses: Live at the Jazz Standard (2000), which was uniquely packaged with bottles of Riesling wine named in honour of Schneider.

Soon after the release of that album, Schneider made the unprecedented decision to distribute her recordings solely online. Partnering with ArtistShare, a fan-funded online digital-recording platform, she produced Concert in the Garden (2004), the first digital download-only album to win a Grammy Award. She also received a Grammy Award for best instrumental composition for “Cerulean Skies,” a piece written for the Sky Blue album (2007), which was produced through ArtistShare. In 2013 Schneider released Winter Morning Walks, which later received three Grammys: for best contemporary classical composition, best classical vocal solo (for soprano Dawn Upshaw), and best-engineered classical album. The following year her orchestra was featured on the David Bowie single “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime),” and her arrangement won a Grammy. She also earned acclaim for the recording The Thompson Fields (2015), and it received the Grammy for best large jazz ensemble album. Data Lords (2020) contrasts the richness of the natural world with the artificiality of the digital one. In 2019 the National Endowment for the Arts named Schneider a Jazz Master.