Maria Schneider

Days Of Wine And Roses

Artist Interview by: John Dworkin

March 2006 - Maria Schneider is not yet a household name. Many musicians have become fixtures of modern or other bygone eras: The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Sinatra, Beethoven - these are household names and there are many others. But under the umbrella of jazz, there are not so many: John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and maybe a few others.

Percentage-wise, jazz makes up a very small portion (something approaching less than 1%) of Americans' record sales. Within that "less than 1%" group, there's an even smaller subset of jazz referred to as "big band" jazz (Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, etc...). And within that smaller subset, there's an even yet smaller subset of jazz now sometimes referred to as "modern/contemporary big band" or "jazz orchestra." This is the subset where Maria Schneider's music resides.

Though Schneider's music is not going to reach as many ears as the next rap or hip-hop sensation, those within her small subset of music (musicians and fans) feel so strongly about her music that against all reason they believe she should be the next jazz artist to become a household name. Her music is that good. She also has a few other things going for her that could push her into mainstream consciousness. One is that she's very thoughtful and well spoken - always a good thing. Another is that she's got a cool "backstory" - her road has been, and I'm sure will continue to be, an interesting one. And not to be forgotten is the fact that she is a woman in a musical genre populated almost entirely by men. Whether the gender issue effects the music or not isn't the point - only that it does make her that much more unique.

I spoke with Maria Schneider over the phone a few days ago about her latest release Days Of Wine And Roses, some of her ideas on music, and the wind.

JazzReview - Hey. I'm looking for Maria Schneider.

Maria Schneider - This is Maria.

JazzReview - Thanks a lot for taking the time to do an interview with us.

Maria Schneider - I'm happy to do it.

JazzReview - I've got a bunch of stuff to get to, but I'd like to just open it up if there's anything in particular that you know you'd like to talk about.

Maria Schneider - Let's just see where it goes.

JazzReview - Alright. The new release Days Of Wine And Roses - I guess new re-release. It was recorded in 2000. Could you talk about when most of the material on the record was written?

Maria Schneider - Yeah, there's notes in there. If you look there's a booklet. It's kind of hidden in the middle. I tell the whole history of this project and what it represents. A lot of the music was written while I was still in college in the mid 80s. Then, some of it was written in the early 90s when I started getting commissions with other groups - mostly arranging. So what that represents is really my first music before I really found my own voice, and also arrangements. My first, kind of, works for hire. It also represents music that was written for big band, but not specifically my own band. I think that in that music you hear hints of what I end up doing, but it also shows the power later on of having my own group and these specific musicians that allows me hone my music into my own voice. Partly... Majorly influenced by my players, you know what I mean?

So I don't want to say the music is generic, but it doesn't have the strong identity of my later music. But I think it's interesting. When I go to a museum having a retrospective (MOMA) of an artist, I love it. I love them because I love to see the beginnings of an artist before they really became the person we all know them to be. Like looking at early Miro is fascinating. You know, landscapes and things like that. You sort of see little hints of the kinds of shapes and squiggles that he does later when he draws all the vineyards and the little vines and things. You see that those little shapes later on turn into all those little monsters and squiggly things (laughs)... and I think my music might be the same way.

JazzReview - When I was listening to it, I could definitely hear some... I don't know how to phrase it, "Schneider-isms" in terms of phrasing or voicing or things like that. But I was also hearing, for lack of a better word, "traditional' style...

Maria Schneider - Yeah. Traditional big band. The music is much more sectional - trumpets, trombones, saxes - and the form is not developed. All my pieces now, or most of them let's say, have through-composed composition.

JazzReview - You mean your stuff from the last few records?

Maria Schneider - Yeah.

JazzReview - Or even from your first one.

Maria Schneider - Yeah, even from my first record.

JazzReview - Definitely.

Maria Schneider - You know when Brookmeyer (Bob Brookmeyer, great trombonist/composer/arranger and mentor to Schneider) does an arrangement, he re-composes it. These are really arrangements (New record Days Of Wine...). Then the songs that are songs, are not so deeply through-composed. They're more like tunes.

JazzReview - How about the "The Willow."

Maria Schneider - "The Willow" is a little bit more unique because the solo changes are different from the outside of the tune. That's probably the most progressive piece on that record.

JazzReview - You were talking about your writing being influenced by your players. Scott, the baritone player on "The Willow"...

Maria Schneider - Scott Robinson.

JazzReview - Yeah. He's been on pretty much all of your records, right?

Maria Schneider - Yeah. Scott's amazing and also just the sound of these guys. The kind of musicality they breath into my music as a group, and also their solos. It's everything. When you work with these people over time and I throw in music that's a little different or unique and it comes back sort of in the way that I expected - but also a little bit different. All of a sudden whatever is a little bit different inspires me to say, "Oh, wow. I didn't know that would result!" So it pushes me even further. These guys have a really beautiful way of blending and playing. I have such wonderful, wonderful players. They each have their own individual sound, but when they play together as a group they can blend together into a beautiful sense of a whole. That's what I love. They're individuals but they all know how to blend.

JazzReview - Plus, you have a really large amount of spectacular soloists as well.

Maria Schneider - Yeah, yeah. I do.

JazzReview - When you're writing a tune or composition, are you sometimes affected in your writing by thinking, "Oh, I've got this spot where I'd like to highlight this player," and what you write, for maybe a solo section, will go to a certain soloists strengths and it kind of combines...

Maria Schneider - Oh yeah. Always. You mean am I basically writing for the soloist?

JazzReview - Yeah. Like maybe you've got that in the back of your mind. Or maybe in the front of your mind.

Maria Schneider - Oh yeah. It's more than in the back. I think of it like being a jeweler. He has this really beautiful stone and he tries to create a ring to offset that stone. That's kind of what I'm trying to do. I want it to be a beautiful ring and I want it to show off the stone. That's what Gil Evans did with Miles [Davis]. That's where I really became inspired to do that. Because Gil had this incredible way of when the sound of the soloist would come in... Whether it would be a singer - Astrud Gilberto on the arrangements he did for her or Wayne Shorter on the Individualism Of Gil Evans or Miles Davis. When that soloist comes in he's got a way of making it such a moment. Like the sky opening and the sun coming through the clouds or something. I want to make my music that way for soloists too.

JazzReview - Yeah. You've got a lot of nice stones.

Maria Schneider - Oh yeah. I sure do.

JazzReview - The parts that you come up with, just the physical parts for the players to read, they must be pretty involved for a lot of the stuff. I'm wondering if you use word descriptions as opposed to regular (musical terms)...

Maria Schneider - Sometimes.

JazzReview - I wonder how much talking over of the part goes into...

Maria Schneider - It is a lot of talking. Actually I have a new piece we're going to record in April called "The Pretty Road." It has a middle section which is sort of aleatoric, which is kind of free and there's a lot of descriptions and a lot of talking for us to come up with how to play that section. Yeah, I can't just notate everything. My music isn't just black and white - "Ok, now you play loud. Now you play soft." I'm always talking to them sometimes about a section getting softer but I want it to feel like they're compressing the volume to a soft volume, rather than releasing the volume to a softer volume. And there's a difference. The intensity of a decrescendo as opposed to the release of a decrescendo, right?

Those little subtleties, they mean a lot in terms of the way the music sounds, to me. I think a lot of big band music and a lot jazz music is kind of: loud, soft, slow, fast, retard here. For me, I want my music to be really deeply feeling. I want people, when they hear my music, to be moved. So if you're going to move and shake somebody, the quality and what you're trying to create with a decrescendo is very important.

JazzReview - It's interesting when you mention the new piece, "The Pretty Road," that's got that section that's aleatoric, or open, or free, and that section needing to be talked about and discussed more. It's interesting to me because I think a lot of people that aren't musicians may think that a piece that's free, open, creative, improvised, whatever you want to name it, might take less discussion to get together but actually the opposite is true a lot of times.

Maria Schneider - Yeah. Well, in this case yeah. Because it isn't that I just want it free. I want it to have a very, very specific effect. What that piece is - it's like a view overlooking my hometown, and you're looking in all the windows, and your hearing different songs, and different people, and different memories. So it's like this collage, sort of like going back in time and seeing this whole mixture of all these people from my life. It's got to create a very profound effect.

You can't just say, "play free," for that (laughs). You can't really just notate it all out... I want it to have the freedom, the feeling of these different people; things overlapping in unmeasured ways, just like people do walking past each other on the street having two different conversations or you're looking into somebody's mind thinking about one thing while somebody else is walking by. Those things aren't measured. They aren't the same every time.

JazzReview - And it's good that they're not the same every time.

Maria Schneider - Yeah.

JazzReview - Well, I'll be looking forward to hearing that. Do you ever think of writing for small groups? Or have you already?

Maria Schneider - No, not really. It's not that I wouldn't. I'm mostly writing for my own group and most of my time is spent writing. I want to write for my own band because then I've got that music to play. A large part of what I do is about orchestration. I compose these pieces, but they're pieces that are... I love orchestration and different textures and things like that.

JazzReview - That's just how your mind is working.

Maria Schneider - Yeah. I've always been into that. Even as a kid I always wanted to write for orchestra. I'd think, "Ahhhh, wow. What would that be like?"

JazzReview - In terms of arranging, have you ever considered arranging some more contemporary modern small group pieces? There's a few great smaller groups and writers that are writing really interesting material, like say, Brian Blade's Fellowship or Pat Metheny.

Maria Schneider - Well, I think part of it too is that [those] guys, when they're writing, they're playing it. I'm not. My performance art is in conducting my music. I also love that connection with the music and with the audience and with creating music and developing the sound of the music and making it happen in real time. So if I spent all of my time writing for different small groups I'd go sit in the audience and watch it being played as opposed to bringing the music to fruition myself through rehearsal and performance.

JazzReview - Oh, I don't mean you writing a small group piece for one of those artists. I meant you taking one of those small group pieces by those artists and making one of your own arrangements out of it.

Maria Schneider - Oh, yeah. Well, maybe. But these days I'm so much more into composing than arranging. I haven't really been arranging music lately. The only time I arrange is when someone commissions me to do so and it's for something that I... Like I arranged a big project for Ivan Lins [Brazilian performer/musician]. You know, because it was Ivan Lins, so I did it. But generally if people come to me and say, "Hey, will you arrange my piece," or something, I'm like no (laughs). I want to be composing my own. I really consider myself to be a composer.

JazzReview - That's actually another thing I wanted to ask you about. Commissions. I think every record that you have out, a lot of the music, maybe even the bulk of them, have been commissioned pieces - whether they're arrangements or your own original stuff. How does that stuff come about? Do you seek them out, or do they come to you?

Maria Schneider- They pretty much come to me. I haven't seeked out commissions. Matter of fact, I've barely solicited a gig. Now I have an agent, so I've gotten gigs. For years I didn't have an agent and I just got gigs. They came to me. I haven't solicited commissions or clinics. I generally get more offers than what I can take on. Which is a nice position to be in.

JazzReview - I'd assume that's all good. I wonder what the situations are like with commissions. Whether you have any kind of constraints on you from the people commissioning you for the music. Like they want a particular style piece...

Maria Schneider - No. I wouldn't take something if people asked that. Usually it's a certain kind of time frame: about a 10-minute piece or a 20-minute piece, or a 30-minute piece (laughs). Whatever. But the best is when they just say, "...something for your orchestra," and then I write something. I'm being paid to write for the group I really know how to write for.

Because, when I write music I don't set out to write a piece in a certain style with a certain intent. What happens to me is: I sit down to write, eventually something starts to come to me, some idea that I like. More often than not that idea slowly reveals itself to me as being about something, or indicative of something. Some kind of feeling, past memory, experience, dynamic... It's got something and I say, "Oh my gosh. I know where this is coming from." It's almost like when you have a dream and you're like, "What was that about?" And then all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, I know what that's about. That's because this and this and this...," and that's what this dream represents. And then you start analyzing it and maybe even turning it into something that it wasn't.

That happens to me when I write music. Sound comes out - it reveals itself as being something - and then I use that experience that attaches itself to bring it to fruition. Now that's very different than, "Can you write us a trumpet feature? We want something that's fast and high and if you could incorporate "Sing Sing Sing" into it..." (laughs). You know what I mean? I can't write that way. There are people who like assignments like that. For me that's just, like, forget it. I don't work that way. It's not the way my creative mind works.

JazzReview - Yeah, I think most creative writers get to a point where that's no longer fun. It's pretty obvious you're past that.

Maria Schneider - I was never good at that. That's why I wasn't a commercial writer. I thought when I moved to New York I might be. It quickly was obvious that it wasn't my thing.

JazzReview - The commercialism thing is interesting. I remember reading in some of your liner notes that you did some work with Gil Evans on a movie (The Color Of Money). I'm wondering what that experience was like. I did an interview with Billy Childs a couple months ago and I asked him about film composing and he said a lot of people ask him about it. He said it was the hardest niche to get into, of any type of music writing.

Maria Schneider - Yeah. It probably is.

JazzReview - I think, if I remember right, he wasn't really all that interested in that anyway. But he said it was very difficult to get into.

Maria Schneider - For me, I don't want to become "a film composer." But I think I would enjoy doing a film here or there. I also think I would be good at it if it was a film I felt interested in, with a director that respected and liked my music and trusted my musical direction. The thing I did with Gil was kind of a rude awakening to the reality of the film world. A lot of that music that Gil created with Robbie Robertson - Robertson stuff that Gil arranged and orchestrated and I orchestrated a couple things...

JazzReview - So you guys actually worked with Robbie?

Maria Schneider - Yeah, but mostly he sent tapes and stuff and then Gil would have me transcribe things and then he'd make pieces out of them. That was sort of the process. They put down so much great music. In the end, when I went to see the film, they didn't use very much of it.

JazzReview - Yeah. My recollection of it is that a lot of the stuff could've been done by just Robbie.

Maria Schneider - Yeah. It was just a lot of just pre-existing tunes. Gil's band was in there but... It was such a bummer because the music Gil had done was so creative and so beautiful. I thought, man, the film would've been so much better if they'd used more of Gil's music. What a drag, you know?

JazzReview - Is there any way to get a recording of the music Gil scored for the film? There was that whole score Alex North wrote for Space Odyssey: 2001. He wrote this entire score. Amazing music. Kubrick blew it off and used that pre-existing music instead. But they released North's music many, many years later.

Maria Schneider - Oh, I doubt that would happen with Gil's stuff for this film.

JazzReview - Oh well. That would be cool if they would. Film world...

Maria Schneider - Yeah. Drag. Maybe someday someone will go through and dig out that stuff and put it on a CD. Outtakes from that. That would be interesting.

JazzReview - So... Writing, in terms of words, not music. The last few CDs of yours have pretty extensive liner notes written by yourself. I wonder if you enjoy writing that kind of thing and what you think of writing about music in general. Some people seem to think it's kind of like "dancing about architecture." You know, that kind of attitude where you think it's not possible to write meaningfully on music because it's beyond words. I think you do it pretty well.

Maria Schneider - Well, I'm mostly writing about my own perspective on my own music, or writing about myself. I'm not describing my music with words. I'm describing what's behind my music. Which I do every time I perform, almost. Before we play a piece I'll tell the audience what the music is about. And I do like writing. I like communicating. Yeah, I enjoy writing. But I've put some work into sitting down and doing that.

I've had people ask me to write liner notes and I usually say no. I always say no. I did it once for this Svengali re-issue [Gil Evans recording]. I just wrote a very short little thing. But generally I'm not into those kinds of liner notes (mock voice): "This piece is, you know... It's got a big romping horn section here, and then so and so gives a rollicking solo..." I can't stand those kinds of liner notes. So I avoid having people write liner notes for me because I don't want people putting there... You know what I mean? That's just one person's way of listening to your music. One person's view. I don't want everyone being influenced by one person's view of listening to my music. I'd rather that they know from me where it comes from, and that's it. Then they listen to it themselves.

JazzReview - For the most part, I like liner notes that are written by artists too. And not necessarily the artist who's record it is. But there are plenty of people who aren't necessarily musicians who can write decent liner notes. But that's why I like reading yours - it's interesting to have the artist's perspective.

Maria Schneider - Because when somebody else writes liner notes it more or less sounds like someone trying to convince you through words that it's going to be good. If an artist writes them, they're talking about something else. They're giving you a window of understanding into the music, which to me is interesting.

JazzReview - Yeah, I've read a lot of artist's liner notes and they don't necessarily have to get really technical with them. So people that have bought the record, maybe if they're not a musician, they can still get useful information or insight out of them. But it does take work to write that stuff. It does take time.

Maria Schneider - Yeah, yeah.

JazzReview - There was something else I got from your liner notes. A little theme I caught through some of the stuff: In the tune "Coming About", the tune "Hang Gliding"...

Maria Schneider - Yeah, motion right?

JazzReview - Well, even more specific. And some of the stuff in the liner notes from Concert In The Garden, and a line from the poem of the same name. In all this stuff there's references to wind. There's a lot of wind goin' on.

Maria Schneider - Yeah. "El Viento" [from Coming About] too, in Spanish means "the wind."

JazzReview - Oh yeah? "El Viento" is my favorite piece of yours, by the way.

Maria Schneider - Oh really?

JazzReview - Yeah, incredibly beautiful. Love that tune.

Maria Schneider - Oh, thanks.

JazzReview - Actually, we were talking earlier about the combination of your composing and writing to a particular soloist's strength and having that push you to write a certain section or something. There's that end section [from "El Viento"] that has that vamp - that really Spanish feeling kind of vamp - where the trombone solo fades and Greg Gisbert comes in playing that incredible solo at the end...

Maria Schneider - Yeah. That's on "El Viento," yeah.

JazzReview - That Spanish tinge thing. It's just incredible. I was thinking maybe you had him in mind while you were writing that, thinking to yourself, "perfect."

Maria Schneider - We're actually going to re-record that. We're performing at Manchester Craftsman's Guild for four days in April. One of the things I want to do is re-record that piece live because we play that so much better now. When we're on with that it's very exciting these days.

JazzReview - I was listening to that the other day and I was thinking that ending section in particular could really be extended and you could just let the guys go with that.

Maria Schneider - Yeah. We let the vamp go longer now.

JazzReview - But, yeah. The wind...

Maria Schneider - I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm from Minnesota. Maybe I saw too many tornadoes (laughs). I think it has more to do with motion - that music is motion. I like when music creates the feeling of motion, whether it's the feeling of dance, or the motion of sailing... The feeling of being invigorated or something like that. I like to create music that has a sense of propulsion. So, maybe that's why all these pieces have this wind related thing. It's something I only noticed recently too. It's not conscious.

I was talking to the audience somewhere about "The Pretty Road" because there's a solo with Ingrid Jensen where it's kind of building up this anticipation of coming to the top of this hill and this kind of release. It's kind of the same thing as building up to flying off the cliff in "Hang Gliding." Or in "Coming About" too, the tenor solo that builds up the feeling of release with the wind or... I don't know why I do that. It is a characteristic of my music.

JazzReview - That forward motion, propulsion thing is maybe subconsciously intertwined the through-composed thing where it just keeps going...

Maria Schneider - Yeah, yeah. Maybe.

JazzReview - Kind of like a longer line, or a circle, or a spiral going up.

Maria Schneider - I just can't stand when I'm listening to music and it just feels like you're just sitting in the same place. I like music that takes me on a trip. I want to grab people's attention and take them on a ride, you know? That's how I feel. Music should be like a ride, and really make it so people just completely get absorbed in that. That's what I want my pieces to be, to bring you into a little world. They either make you feel like you're flying, or make you just... Who knows what, but that they grab you.

I don't want people sitting and listening to my music and saying (mock voice), "Oh, that's interesting." (laughs). That's why I get so tired of jazz that's just so complex, measured, metric and - impressive. You know? I'm not looking to impress anybody. I'm looking to move people. What I like is when people say, "Wow, I was just taken away, " or "The concert went so fast because I got so involved." Or if there's a person who's just a very intellectual person and their favorite piece ends up being the prettiest piece, or the simplest piece on the program. That's nice for me to hear because it means you're bringing people out of their heads and into their hearts. That's what it is. I want my music to bring people out of their heads and into their hearts so that the most intellectual musician sitting there is no longer analyzing what I'm doing, but I've brought them out of that kind of head space.

I think that's where jazz has lost a lot of people and actually lost itself in a way. So many people think that going further and further is getting deeper into the head. It's not. That's not where this music came from. This music came from the heart. And that's not to say that music can't be complex. But when music is complex for complexity's sake, that's where it runs into problems.

JazzReview - I'd agree with that. There's a lot of that going around. Though there's a few guys that I can think of in particular who are able to write relatively complex harmony, or metric things...

Maria Schneider - ...and have it be something... you feel they're not doing it for that reason.

JazzReview - Yeah. It's still personal. There's people around who can do that, and I hear that.

Maria Schneider - But the bulk majority of what's coming out these days is not that. I think there is a trend - more and more people are realizing that maybe the next step in their music is simplicity. And that doesn't mean dumbing it down. Not at all. That's not what I'm saying at all. It's a hard thing to describe but anybody recognizes it when they hear it or see it. In art too.

JazzReview - Yeah. For me it has to feel like it's personal. If it gets complex but it's still personal, which I think some of your stuff is like, then it's... Well, using words like these is kind of weird sometimes, but it's honest, personal, and real. As opposed to just trying to go through an exercise. Whether you're a musician or not, you can usually feel whether that's going on. Whether it's really a personal statement or not. Sometimes that's in the composition, sometimes it's just in the blowing. Depends on the artist.

JazzReview - I wonder if you write at the piano?

Maria Schneider - Yeah, I mostly write at the piano. Not completely at the piano, because sometimes I need to get away. I'll go to the park and work on some stuff there, but mostly at the piano.

JazzReview - When you sit at the piano, do you play things first and go with that, or do you try to let things come to you in your head and then pick them out on the piano or...

Maria Schneider - It's hard to say how that works. My head is leading me to search for certain things. I'm not that good a pianist so it's not like I'm writing what I play. I couldn't possibly improvise what I'm writing (laughs). I don't have that. It's more like I come up with some ideas and then I put out a big piece of score paper. Then I try to manipulate that idea in all sorts of different ways, and then I use the piano to try things out and listen and I'll say, "Nah, maybe that or this," or whatever. Sometimes I'll record things into a tape recorder in a couple layers and I'll listen along and play another part with it. I don't do computers and all that stuff.

So I'm testing ideas and I try to figure out how the pieces might fit together and how to create a good sense of timing. And then I'll put it into a tape recorder and dance around (laughs)... and try to figure out through my body if a section is too long or too short and then I go back and sit at the piano and try to figure out how to expand a section or add a new section.

JazzReview - The dancing thing is interesting. I wonder if that's a way for you to try to work through a problem or an issue in a piece. I knew someone who used to tape all the written pieces of score paper to the wall, in a line, and he'd sing the melodies to himself and walk around the room looking at the pages on the wall...

Maria Schneider - To try to get a feeling of time? I've done that.

JazzReview - So yeah, dancing and doing that thing with the pages up on the wall...

Maria Schneider - Getting the feeling of time is the hardest thing.

JazzReview - Time as in how long a piece should be or...

Maria Schneider - Yeah. How long a section should happen before it expires or how long a build should happen to feel like a build or for it not to feel labored. Or for it to feel like it happened too quickly and you didn't milk the tension. How long a slow section should be or how long a space should be, or a retard. How many times something should repeat before it gets changed slightly. It's time. It's time driven. You've got to divvy the information out in the right sequence with the right sense of timing in order to have the piece grab people, you know? Just like a movie.

JazzReview - Movies for your ears. Do you live in New York?

Maria Schneider - Yeah. Upper West Side.

JazzReview - Do you think where you live effects your writing?

Maria Schneider - Oh, that's impossible to say because I don't know what anything else is like.

JazzReview - I'd assume wherever anyone lives is going to effect them somehow, in their writing. Some people really love certain aspects of the city and they try to write something that might...

Maria Schneider - I just like living in the city because it's very social and I go out in the street and see people. I don't want to live in the country in a kind of reclusive way. I had that my whole childhood in a way. I like the activity, and hearing the neighbors and the doors. It makes me feel like there's life around me. But does it effect my music? I mean... There's a violinist who lived above me. Unfortunately he doesn't practice too much upstairs anymore, which I miss. I always loved him working up there while I'm working down here. It reminded me of college and being in the dorm.

JazzReview - Speaking of college, I read that you did some teaching at Hunter College. That's in the city too, right?

Maria Schneider - Well, it wasn't really teaching. I did a four concert series and one clinic there. But mainly it was a concert series I did with my band.

JazzReview - I wonder if you have thoughts on teaching this kind of stuff [composition]?

Maria Schneider - Well I do it when I do clinics. I taught a little bit at Manhattan School and The New School for a while. But I don't want to teach full-time. It's not my thing. On occasion I'll teach a private lesson, but even that I'm cutting back because I don't have that much time for myself. But I go out and do clinics. And I love to do that. I love to talk to... [incoming call to Maria Schneider - pause in conversation].

Maria Schneider - [back from other phone call] Aaaayyy... (somewhat exasperated). People are dropping like flies for one of these gigs I have coming up. Like half the band can't do it suddenly. It's a drag.

JazzReview - Yeah, but you're in New York so there's plenty of good subs (laughs).

Maria Schneider - Yeah, but it's not quite like that with my music, you know? (laughs). Then I've got to have a rehearsal. You don't just throw a bunch of players together to play that music. Suddenly you've got to rehearse and half the band really knows the music and doesn't need to rehearse and then you're wasting everybody's time. It's a drag.

JazzReview - Last thing I wanted to ask you about. Not sure how relevant this is but I'm interested. I read the liner notes of Concert In The Garden and noticed that the record was mixed in The Barn in Vermont.

Maria Schneider - Yeah. Phish's studio.

JazzReview - I wonder how you hooked up with those guys and what their place was like in Vermont.

Maria Schneider - I met Trey through the guy who started ArtistShare. He's a good friend of Trey's: Brian Camelio. They were over here working on something one day, using my apartment, and Trey got to know my music and was very enthusiastic. He asked me to arrange something on the last Phish album. So I did that. He was really nice and he invited me to work at his studio to do some things there. He was very helpful to me.

JazzReview - In all the interviews I've read or seen with him, he seems like a very genuine, nice guy. Excellent musician.

Maria Schneider - He's a great guy. Really great guy. Very creative, very high energy, very inspiring. Always flying from thing to thing and very fun to be around. I really like him a lot.

JazzReview - And the Phish thing, of course, is a rock thing, a quartet with a lot of improv. But his solo record, I think, had some sort of large group on it.

Maria Schneider - Yeah, and it's really good writing. It's really fun.

JazzReview - So I'm sure that he was loving your stuff.

Maria Schneider - As a matter of fact he's somebody I've been meaning to give a call to because I've been a little bit out of touch with him. He lives in town now, he moved up here, so...

JazzReview - Well alright.

Maria Schneider - Ok!

For more information: http://www.mariaschneider.com

Photo by: © Jos Knaepen

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