Blazing a Trail

For all of her professional life, American jazz composer Maria Schneider has done it her way. She has traveled the world with her jazz orchestra, worked on film scores and with rock stars, and she was one of the first musicians to fan-fund an album. ”Winter Moving Walks”  went on to win multiple Grammys, even though it was financed online and sold exclusively over the Internet. These are just a few of the trails Schneider has blazed during her innovative and illustrious career.

Maria Lynn Schneider was born in Windom, Minnesota in 1960, where she lived all of her young life, including attending college at the University of Minnesota. After graduate school she went to work for jazz composer and bandleader Gil Evans as an assistant and copyist. It was through her association with Evans that she got to work on a music tour with Sting and on the score of the movie, “The Color of Money.”

She formed the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra in 1992 and played Europe, South America, Asia and the US. Throughout her versatile career she has played in more than 30 countries and, it is estimated, with more than 80 groups. She’s considered to be an avant garde and experimental musician, excelling in progressive jazz, big band arrangements and post-bop music.

Her dedication to her art is revealed in one well-known anecdote: an avid bird watcher, Schneider needed authentic bird sounds to accompany her song “Cerulean Skies.” So how did she solve that problem? She convinced her band members to learn certain bird calls and contribute them to the track. It worked, and that song went on to gain a notoriety all its own. “Cerulean Skies” illustrates what Schneider is all about – innovation, beauty, skill, daring and, most of all, dedication to her art.