Maria Schneider (musician)

Maria Schneider is an American composer and bigbandleader. Her 2004 album Concert in the Garden won a Grammy for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album,. Her 2007 composition Cerulean Skies won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition. In 2013, Schneider released an album Winter Morning Walks featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw, the Saint Paul and Australian Chamber Orchestras, bassist Jay Anderson, pianist Frank Kimbrough and multiinstrumentalist Scott Robinson. In 2014 it won three Grammy Awards Best Classical Contemporary Composition for the work Winter Morning Walks written to poetry by US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Ted Kooser. Dawn Upshaw received a Grammy for her vocal performance on the same recording, and producer David Frost and engineers Tim Martyn and Brian Losch all received Grammys for Best Engineered Album, Classical. The album fanfunded through ArtistShare is surely one of the first, if not the first album by major American orchestras to be fanfunded.

Schneider was born in Windom, Minnesota. She studied music theory and composition at the University of Minnesota, graduating in 1983, then earned a Masters in Music in 1985 from the Eastman School of Music, studying for one year as well at the University of Miami. Upon leaving Eastman, Gil Evans hired her as his copyist and assistant. Schneider collaborated with Evans for the next several years, working with him on music for a tour with Sting and assisting him as he scored the film The Color of Money. Schneider went on to study with Bob Brookmeyer from 1986 to 1991.

Source: Wikipedia