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In conversation with maria schneider

by Eugene Marlow

In the annals of jazz history there are a few notables who are so well known and respected that the mere mention of a first or last name or nickname immediately identifies them. Pops, Bird, Benny, The Judge, Duke, Miles, Tatum, Evans are a few that come quickly to mind. In more recent times, particularly in New York Circles, mention the name Maria and people know who you are talking about: Grammy award-winning composer, arranger, conductor and educator Maria Schneider.

The music itself defies standard definitions of jazz. The inner musical lines reflect her own inner voices. The music is full of characteristic Schneiderisms: undulating waves of piano to forte to piano, especially in the brass, and highly textured orchestrations evoking visual imagery and musical colors. It is very personal music.

In a recent conversation, Schneider discussed her approach to her work, the inspiration behind her music, as well as her aspirations and plans for the future.

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I was listening to the Sky Blue album again and I wrote down some words to describe it. I want to use Sky Blue as a jumping off point because I want to talk to you about you as a composer and how you get to your material. So, here are some words and please respond to these words. You tell me if Im on target here or not: Contemplative. Personal. Moody. Serious. Searching. Reaching. Feminine. Emotional waves. Expansive. Symphonic. Mahlerian. Filmic. Full of musical scenes. Very American. Great use of brass. The question I want to ask you is: How much of your material is autobiographical? Thats really two questions. Do those words describe you as a composer?

Its hard to say because when I write music, more and more I realize I follow my music, rather than lead it. Years ago, I had a conversation with Brazilian-born composer-guitarist Egberto Gismonti. You should listen to his music. Youll flip out. Youll just love it, I know. He said, You should never lead the music. You must follow the music. I didnt really know what he meant then, but Im starting to know what he meant now.

I think my music tells me what it is and very often its something about my life. And its either going back in time or its just expressing where I am in the moment. So I would say its very autobiographical, but some of it is real time autobiography, some is like a diary almost. And then some is a kind of historic autobiographical. I dont know why or how or if this is similar to other people, but a lot of times when I sit down to write, Im not thinking about writing about anything. Like, Oh, Im sad. Im going to write a sad piece now. Thats simplistic, but it isnt like that. Its more like I sit down to write and sounds come out a lot of times in the way a daydream will just come up. Youll be walking and all of a sudden, you just find yourself thinking about a certain person or something comes up.

Maria Schneider
Photo by Jos L. Knaepen

A lot of times when Im writing, as Im coming up with the music, some scene will come up in my head and Im not even consciously looking to imagine what Im going to be thinking about when Im writing. I can find the subject, but a lot of times as that scene comes up in my head, as Im working on the music, the music becomes almost like a film score to that thing. And then before I realize it, Im consciously writing about memory or Im writing about something that happened. So its like the music conjures up a memory and then the memory feeds the music. And it almost feels as if some past memory wants to be manifested into something to be shared which for me means music.

Do you ever feel you ever get in the way of the music?

I dont know. I hope not. Sometimes I feel certain limitations. When I was writing Cerulean Skies, I had ideas about a certain freedom and what I wanted the music to be and I was wondering if I had the technical capability to get across the feeling I wanted. Sometimes I feel limited -- that the music wants to be more than I want to make it.

Your music sounds very flowing as if its easy, as if one idea flows into the other, very casually. It doesnt sound forced. It sounds very natural. Is it because youre that disciplined in the writing of the music?

What youre talking about is incredibly hard work, to make the transitions and everything feel navigable and like it just happened. That isnt to say you dont want surprise in your music, but you want the kind of surprises that feel like you want them to happen. That is just very, very, very difficult. It does not come naturally to create those changes and those shifts, and all of a sudden youre in a new place; but it feels like it just flows into it. Its very difficult.

Every once in a while, youll come up with a transition or something that comes easy. Im sure youve experienced that in your own composing. Some things just come easy and youre like, Oh, Im a genius. You know? And then the next minute, you turn around and you just for the life of you cant figure out how to get from point A to point B in a logical way. And its very, very difficult. I really struggle as a composer. And Im happy if the music sounds free because I dont want the music to feel the way I feel when Im writing it. I want it to feel the way I feel behind the writing of it. But I think a lot of my complexities in writing music arent that writing music is so difficult. And maybe its like you said, I get in the way of the music. Thats my own psychology. Do I get in the way of my music? My own self-doubt gets in the way of the music.

What doubts do you have even at this point in your career?

Plenty, plenty. That Im going to write a horrible piece and that the people who commissioned it are going to be dissatisfied and Im going to embarrass myself and the whole band and everybody in the universe is going to laugh at me. Everything that everybody else worries about, I worry about. At this point if I write not the greatest piece, its not going to destroy my entire reputation or whatever, but I want every piece to be something special. With every piece Im trying to reach further and further and I always feel like we get further and further, but theres an infinite distance to go. Its like going around a circle. Were just at a different point in the circle.

How do you get yourself out of the way then? How do you deal with those doubts? How do you push them aside so you can get to the work?

The best is if I can just get the enthusiasm for the idea, if I can forget myself and make it about the music and not about me. If I can just get myself to express what Im expressing and forget about how Im being perceived. Its the same as like public speaking. Years ago, when I was in high school and wed have to read in school out loud I used to get so nervous my voice would shake. I couldnt breathe. It was horrible. You probably cant believe that because on the mike at a performance Im so bordering on obnoxious and inappropriate -- and maybe not even bordering on it. It seems probably very easy for me to speak to a room of people, but when I was a kid, it was not.

I had a girlfriend who had been a Miss Aquatennial Queen in Minnesota. I think she was probably 16 years old or 17 at the time and she had to give all these speeches all over the place for various groups and I was like, Cathy, how do you do that? And she said, When you speak, you have to just think about the message. If you start thinking about yourself and how youre being perceived, youre going to implode, but you have to think about what youre getting across. And I realize its the same in anything, in writing or just being natural. If you just go to your heart and youre just expressing, your self-doubt goes away. The minute you start thinking about how they are perceiving you and you get out of your center, youre lost. Its probably like martial arts or gymnastics or skating. You have to be centered. You have to know where your center of gravity is for everything. And in writing music, or creating, your center of gravity is this elusive spot in yourself. Its this point in yourself where youre highly alert to your ideas and your energy is really there. Its very much internal. I really think its almost learning to meditate is learning to write music.

Am I correct in saying that your music has become increasingly symphonic, broader?

I think so. Not consciously so, but I think it is.

I remember you telling me once you had gone to a Mahler Concert. I dont remember which one of the symphonies. But it gave me the sense that even then you were reaching for that kind of sound, that kind of concept in writing for your orchestra.

Ive had more people say that the Sky Blue album reminds them of Mahler and Im not sure why. There are people who know every Mahler symphony well. Im not one of them. So it certainly isnt conscious. I should really listen carefully to Mahler and see what people are hearing, because youre not the first person whos said that.

I love trying to make my big band sound like an orchestra, not like a big band, getting all these subtle colors out of the group. I dont want my group to sound like a big band because to me a big band doesnt have a lot of emotional subtly and expression in it. Its got power and energy and its fun and it can be beautiful, but its not often very moving and I want my music to be very expressive and very moving.

Why?

Because thats what Im trying to do, thats the reason I write: to express, to say something. Its like storytelling for me.

Is this what youre always reaching for? To try to tell some kind of a story?

I dont think it always is; because there are pieces on the album that have no story, so its not specifically a story. But Im just wishing to share a sensibility. All I know is that if Im not doing it for too long, Im not happy and if Im doing it too much, Im also not happy because Im stressed. Its just one of those things. It is who I am at this point. And writing these pieces, its like a person who just cant keep from having babies. They just keep coming.

Is there something youre consciously aware of that youre trying to get to in your music or are you just tapping into some creative drive and it comes out as a musical composition?

Its completely not premeditated. Theres nothing Im trying to do. I have no idea whats coming next. I used to really panic about that, thinking I dont know what I want to do, maybe theres nothing else. Ive just grown to trust that theres a spring there and whatever comes out needs to come out. With each of my six albums, I didnt really plan to write them as an album. But each album has a certain cohesiveness about it and I think the cohesiveness comes because what Im putting on these albums, what Im actually writing is sort of a chronology of my life. So the pieces that came about during, for example, the Concert in the Garden album, that music was probably largely influenced maybe by having gone to Brazil. For some reason I was getting deeply into dance. Im not sure, but theres something those pieces have in common.

This album, Sky Blue, is something else. I think the music on this album is probably emotionally my most provocative and Im not really sure what thats about. Maybe in five years, Ill look back. Somebody asked me what music Id been listening to in an interview and I said, Ive been listening to a lot of singers. And then all of a sudden I realized thats a real trait of this album, the melodies are simple and singable.

I think youre right.

And I think it has to do with because Ive been going through a phase of listening to singers singing simple things, and not necessarily jazz singers. I think whatever you immerse your life in in terms of either what you do, what kind of conversations you have, the way you live, emotionally where youre at, with friends or family or your own life or whether your healthy or ill or what -- all these things come into your world and it creates something. I cant know what I want to work towards because I dont know where Im going to be. Ive lived long enough to know that you really cant predict what things hit your life from one day to the next.

That is true.

The music follows that. To predict where you are creatively is kind of crazy.

What are you working on now?

Im not. The album had me completely, insanely busy until the end of July [2007]. And then we started the whole publicity thing because its very important that I pay for this thing. So there were a lot of interviews and then I started this marathon of traveling and touring, working with a lot of other groups, and clinics. And I was going to be doing a huge flamenco project next summer and I pulled out of it. I even talked about it in interviews and I was very excited about it, but I realized I just overdid it. I really overdid it this year, actually the last two years. And I needed some space in my life.

So right now Im just trying to catch up on endless desk work and Ive been just in my apartment getting rid of things, books, and I want to organize all my music. I dont even know what I have here. Ive got so many CDs here that its such a pile. It becomes this blob and I know there is all this great music there that I want to listen to. So I just have to have some space in my life for those things. Ive just been like a production machine here for the last couple of years.

You also had a very successful last couple of years. Several commissions, an armful of awards from the Jazz Journalists Association, a Grammy, and now another Grammy nomination for Sky Blue and another for one of the cuts on the album, Cerulian Skies.

Yeah. Its been great. Its been really great, but I just need a little bit of a rest and Im trying to figure out what gigs and commissions Im going to take. Today, a commission came in that will be something I can actually use for the orchestra. Ive had some really unusual people talk to me, but Im going to hesitate to say what it is because I dont want to do that thing of talking about something and then pulling out from it again -- that is things other than the big band, things that include strings and stuff like that are possible in the future.

A closing question. Ever since Ive known you, you seem to be very much in touch with yourself. I dont mean in an egotistical sense, but very much attuned to yourself and things around you. Am I correct on that? I think that informs your music in some way.

In touch with myself? In what kind of way do you mean?

You dont ignore yourself.

Youre probably right. Everything I do, from the way I run my business now and the way I do my music, I dont give it away. In terms of the way I live, Im very concerned about my house, and my diet and exercising, so I really watch and take care of myself. I expend a lot of energy. When I go and work with a group someplace, I expend so much energy, mental energy and kind of heart energy. You meet all these new people, youre making the music happen and its really fun, but sometimes I dont realize how exhausted Ive become or how much Ive depleted myself until I come home. And when I come home, I really have to recharge. And when youve always got more work on your plate, its very hard to do that.

Im actually trying to get better about that because I think to some degree Ive been a little bit out of touch with myself. Ive been more focused on the project at hand and needing to do this or that, or focusing on that this person expects this or that, and a lot of times Ill take on all these projects, and my head is spinning when it should really be on me, assessing my energy and asking myself what I truly want to do. Ive found sometimes I make the mistake of doing things because Im obligated to it because I told somebody I would do it, therefore I have to do it. Im not really stopping to think, Maria, do you really have the energy for this? I think I have to be more careful about that. So, Im not sure how much its true that Im so in touch with myself. Im actually working on being more in touch with myself.

Terrific. Youve given me enough material for a chapter in a book. Thank you, Maria Schneider

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January 05, 2008 · 4 comments