About a week before the Down Beat cover story about Maria Schneider hit the news-stands, I got a close up view of her work as the guest conductor of the Jazz Orchestra Finale of the Banff Summer Arts Festival. Other featured artists included trombonist/conductor Hugh Fraser, who is the director of the program at the Banff Centre; superb Albertan saxophonist P.J. Perry ("Dr. Perry", now that he has just received an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of Alberta); and trumpeter/composer John Korsrud, whose superb new composition "The Lowest Tide" almost stole the show for me.
But the evening belonged to Maria Schneider. Calling her "the most important woman in jazz" , is the sort of hyperbole that I have come to expect from Time Magazine, but for once it did not set me up for disappointment. If we are to think of big band/orchestral music as a contemporary twenty-first century phenomenon, and not simply as a mid-twentieth century artefact, then we must look above all to Schneider's composing, bandleading and arranging capabilities.
Ms. Schneider is somewhat unusual in the tradition of big band leaders, in that she does not normally play an instrument onstage, and it is difficult to see how how she could, given how much expressive movement and physical energy she brings to the act of conducting. I attended the concert with a professional symphony violinist of some 20 years standing, who remarked that Schneider moved like a dancer. Her grace and physical beauty seemed integral to the music (although I found myself wondering which instrument her pelvic movements were directed at!), and I later discovered that indeed several of her compositions were largely influenced by her love of dance and movement.
She opened with "Allegresse", a piece which was commissioned by Frits Bayens and the Metropole Orchestra (and which in the original studio version featured Nanaimo's Ingrid Jensen soloing on trumpet and flugelhorn). The youthful Banff orchestra did a creditable job on this one, especially considering that (judging from the busy schedule listed on her website) they only had two or three days to rehearse with her before the concert. What it lacked in memorable melody it more than made up for in beautiful hue and texture.
"Green Piece" was her first major composition, written while an understudy of Bob Brookmeyer's in New York in the mid-1980s, and it recalls the musical influence and distinctive instrumentation of Gil Evans. Like other compositions from her first album, Evanescence, it seems at once both more melodic and more familiar than her more recent work--even though her more recent work is on all accounts superior in terms of its development.
"Sky Blue" was a preview of her new album of the same name, to be released on July 12, 2007. It was written for one of her best friends, who she explained had been dying of cancer; not morose though, it is a lovely piece. Schneider's rapport with her audience is another aspect of her music that was showcased in Banff. "Hang Gliding" is daringly written in 11/4, but that suits the piece perfectly, as it attempts to describe the beauty of being lifted by wind currents during her first introduction to hang gliding in Rio De Janeiro.
All in all, it was a wonderful weekend to be in Banff. On the way to the concert, I picked up a hitchhiker named Eva, (the aforementioned violinist), with whom I watched the concert and with whom I hiked around Lake Louise the next day. If she ever sends the pictures she took, I'll post one or two right here!
