Small-Town Girl Finds Big-City Success in Jazz

Can an ambitious and talented girl from the small Midwest farming community of Windom, Minn., find success and happiness in the big city? Let’s say there’s a fair chance. New York City’s entertainment world is rejuvenated every year by eager talent from the small towns of America.

But what if the girl’s primary goal is to work as a jazz composer? Now we’re talking serious long shots, which makes the accomplishments of Windom favorite daughter Maria Schneider all the more remarkable.

Over the last decade, Schneider has organized and led her own jazz orchestra, conducted numerous other ensembles (including the Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra) in programs of her music, received several Grammy nominations and been honored with a series of awards in Down Beat magazine’s critics’ and readers’ polls.

The Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra makes its debut appearances tonight and Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s Founders Hall. Her 18-piece ensemble is the largest to perform in the 299-seat venue, and seating will be in a traditional concert setting rather than the nightclub-style table-and-chairs setup often used for jazz performances. Her group also plays Sunday at Cal State Northridge.

Schneider, 41, was hardly an overnight success. Jazz doesn’t have an official glass ceiling, but far fewer females than males are working as instrumental performers or composer-arrangers. So when she arrived in New York in the mid-’80s, her options appeared limited, despite her master’s degree in composition from the Eastman School of Music.

Her break came with an invitation to work as musical assistant to much-admired arranger-composer Gil Evans. But that was only the first step up the ladder.

“I worked at a club called Visiones with my orchestra every Monday night for more than five years,” she recalls. “The guys in the band made $20, and I made $15. So I had to build a whole list of guys who were very good but not very well known.”

She adds with a laugh, “That put me in the weird position of wanting them to be successful with their own careers but not so successful that they couldn’t continue working with me.”

Schneider, with typical modesty, fails to mention that players were eager for the opportunity to perform her music, which is both technically challenging and creatively rewarding.

Many of her finer works are chronicled in her three critically praised albums: “Evanescence” (a 1994 tribute to Evans), “Coming About” and “Allegresse” (all on the Enja label).

In addition, there is a somewhat more unusual album, available only as a promotional item.

“It’s called ‘Days of Wine and Roses,’” says Schneider. “I had worked at a vineyard in Germany, and they named this wine after me: Maria Schneider Riesling. So I asked if I could make a live recording with my band to market with the wine. Which was a great idea, since I’d never done a live album.

“We recorded at the Jazz Standard in New York, live to two-track. And it came out really well--kind of like the feeling of sitting in the club, actually listening to the band.” She adds that Maria Schneider Riesling is sold in Southern California at Bristol Farms markets, packaged with the album.

Writing and leading a large acoustic jazz ensemble may seem anachronistic in an era when the guitar has been king and rock, rhythm and blues, rap, hip-hop and electronica have been dominant. But Schneider, fascinated with jazz as a teenager, eager to compose in the genre, turned to the only outlets available.

“In college,” she says, “if you wanted to write for jazz musicians and to write orchestrated music, the only ensemble that was available was the big band. But I was always interested in approaching it from a different perspective, using mutes and woodwinds and so forth so that it had a chamber group sound and not just a combination of trumpets, trombones, saxophones and rhythm.”

That innovative approach has remained an essential aspect of her art. Consider, for example, the analogy she makes about composing and playwriting.

“My pieces,” she says, “are a lot like plays, with the musicians as the actors. I try to create stories and have the music develop and go through different dramatic phases.”

Schneider also believes strongly in the descriptive power of music and in its capacity to simulate experiences.

“In my piece ‘Hang Gliding’” on her “Allegresse” CD, she says, “I tried to create an actual physical impression--the vicarious experience of what it felt like for me to hang glide over a place like Rio de Janeiro, of bobbing on top of a thermal, diving through the air.”

Later this month, Schneider makes a sentimental journey home to Windom, where she will perform with her orchestra for the first time in her native Minnesota.

“Literally back home,” she says, “in an auditorium that had gone to ruin and has now been renovated. And that’s very special to me, because I want people in Windom to know that I would not be doing what I’m doing if I hadn’t had all those performance experiences in that space--dancing, playing recitals and so forth.

“The first time I did something at Carnegie Hall, I walked out onstage, and my impression was, ‘Wow, this feels exactly like how the high school auditorium in Windom felt when I went out to do my first piano recital.’”

The satisfying circularity of taking her art back to the place where it began is understandably emotional for Schneider.

“Half my pieces are really based on experiences I had there,” she says. “The truck stop where I was a waitress, the people I knew, the experiences I had. The people who come to hear us in Orange County are going to hear all sorts of stories about Windom, Minn., when I describe my pieces, and actually experience it in a vicarious sort of way when I play them.

“I love the fact that I’m from a small town,” Schneider adds. “Windom was the greatest. But now that I’ve been in New York for about 17 years, New York is the greatest too. Maybe I just think any place I am is the greatest. And maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

The Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra, Founders Hall in the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Today and Saturday, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. $49. (714) 556-2787. Also at the Cal State Northridge Center for the Performing Arts, 18111 Nordhoff St. Sunday, 5 p.m. $30. (818) 677-2488.