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Renowned composer and bandleader Maria Schneider will perform with her 20-piece jazz orchestra 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 10 in the Williams Center for the Arts.
Tickets for the performance are free for students, $4 for Lafayette faculty and staff, and $22 for the public. They can be obtained by calling the Williams Center box office at (610) 330-5009. Schneider will also give a talk about her work at 7 p.m. in room 123 of the Williams Center.
Remaining performers in this year’s Jazz Masters Series include the Bill Charlap Trio, Wednesday, March 7, $18, and Uri Caine’s Goldbergs Project, Wednesday, April 4, $18.
The Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra excels in harmonic nuance, expressive eloquence, and sheer beauty of sound. Their Grammy winning 2004 recording, Concert in the Garden, garnered praise for its silken composition and masterful skill of the musicians.
Maria Schneider was born in Windom, Minn. and arrived in New York City in 1985 after studying at the University of Minnesota, University of Miami, and Eastman School of Music. As an assistant to Gil Evans, she worked on various projects with him, including the film The Color of Money and the Gil Evans/Sting tour in 1987. She has been invited to conduct Evans’ music featuring such musicians as Jon Faddis, Wallace Roney, Miles Evans, Ingrid Jensen, and David Sanborn.
Together since 1993, the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra has appeared at Visiones in Greenwich Village and jazz festivals and concert halls across Europe as well as in Brazil and Macau.
Schneider has served as a guest conductor for groups in the United States, Italy, Portugal, France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Slovenia, Austria, Canada, Scotland, Australia, Greenland, and Iceland.
Schneider’s commissions have included the Norrbotten Big Band, Danish Radio Orchestra, Metropole Orchestra, Stuttgart Jazz Orchestra, Orchestre National de Jazz, Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra, Monterey Jazz Festival, University of Miami Concert Jazz Band, Hunter College, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, and Peter Sellars’ New Crowned Hope Festival.
Schneider was also the recipient of a Doris Duke award to compose a dance work in collaboration with the Pilobolus dance group. It was performed with her orchestra at the American Dance Festival at the Kennedy Center.
Concert in the Garden, released only through Schneider’s website, became the first Grammy-winning recording with Internet-only sales. It received Jazz Album of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Awards and the Downbeat Critics Poll. Both also awarded Schneider Composer of the Year and Arranger of the Year, and the Jazz Journalists also named her group Large Jazz Ensemble of the Year.
Schneider’s debut recording Evanescence was nominated for two 1995 Grammy Awards. Her second and third recordings, Coming About and Allégresse, were also nominated for Grammys. Allégresse was chosen by both Time and Billboard in their Top Ten Recordings of 2000. Her newest recording Sky Blue is scheduled for release from her ArtistShare website June 14.
The 2006-2007 Performance Series at Lafayette is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by provisions of the Josephine Chidsey Williams Endowment, Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, James Bradley Fund, and Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour; the F.M. Kirby Foundation, Dexter and Dorothy Baker Foundation, and New England Foundation for the Arts.