Customer Reviews

Maria Schneider - Sky Blue [Standard Edition] CD -(Wallet style packaging with one booklet)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Five BIG Stars!! This is a wonderful big band jazz performance by the awesome Grammy-winning and multiple DownBeat Jazz Poll-winning composer, arranger, and orchestra leader Maria Schneider. Her large 17 piece group comes up big with a HUGE performance on her third CD. With superb soloists, unusual shifting tempos, and orchestrations that range from solo instruments out of tempo to huge dense orchestral colorations unlike any you'll find in jazz or any other music, this is wonderful jazz that is very inspiring and intellectually stimulating. Ms Schneider is influenced by her mentor, the legendary Gil Evans, but bears her own individual music stamp with quicksilver music that ranges from deep introspection to high exultation. She paints on a huge sonic canvas that at once evokes the sweeping strokes of painter Jackson Pollock and the pointillism of Georges Seurat, while giving seven of her talented musicians lots of solo time in their respective songs, which shows the capabilities of the overall orchestra. Neither conventional 4/4 swing nor New Age, it's very exotic & fascinating stuff that pulled me into the sonic canvas. It's the direct descendant of the symphonic Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton, Charles Mingus, and maestro Evans, but with her own adventurous twists and turns.

Each song is a 'Piece De Resistance' in itself using multiple tempos, extensive solo time, dense sonic layers, and unusual effects. On "The 'Pretty' Road", Ingrid Jensen's blazing serpentine-like solo goes from flugelhorn to trumpet to electronic trumpet layers. Guest vocalist Luciana Souza wordlessly soars above it all. "Aires de Lando" is a halting, tango-like theme with a wild virtousic clarinet solo by Scott Robinson that builds to a crescendo with the orchestra pushing and complementing the solo. The whole orchestra virtually 'comps' behind the solo in a really weird and wonderful effect that almost approaches a solo in itself as it surges ahead of the clarinet at places. A unusual but terrific performance!! "Rich's Piece" has a air of foreboding and dissonance behind the extensive slithery Rich Perry tenor sax solo, with rising waves of sound that dissipate only to rise again, and shifting instrumental clusters of sound, with Jay Anderson's free roaming bass commenting underneath. The epic "Cerulean Skies", the 2007 Grammy winner for Instrumental Composition, is almost 22 minutes of musical wonder, populated by a forest of orchestral bird and forest-like effects that bend perfectly to the arc of the song's theme before the entire song lifts and soars into the sonic sky, with a hip backbeat and a dash of funk. Grammy-nominated reed man Donny McCaslin gets off a wild tenor sax solo that ranks as one of the year's best jazz solos as he surfs the valleys, mountains, and canyons of Ms Schneider's awesome orchestrations with Ms Souza again making an appearance. But this is only half of this epic sonic masterwork, I'll leave the rest of this discovery to you. Ms Schneider's music is brought to us through fan-financed ArtistShare, whose website sells it either directly or through other specific sellers. After a month of being blown away by these performances, this wonderful Grammy-nominated CD with the 2007 Best Instrumental Composition Grammy-winning "Cerulean Skies," gets My Highest Recommendation. Five AMAZING Stars!!
(audio CD, 63:11 total running time, LP-type CD-sized sleeve, with liner notes in a separate booklet insert.)

Maria Schneider - "Sky Blue" (audio CD, 2007)

This is the latest CD by a modern jazz orchestral composer/arranger/conductor who has already deservedly established a great reputation. It contains a set of 5 separately-commissioned pieces, each with its own very distinct and distinctive character. Maria's own liner notes provide detailed information about how they came to be inspired and created. The first, "The 'Pretty' Road", with a particularly attractive central theme, reflects happy childhood memories. The second captures flavours of Peruvian music and rhythms, while the third is a ruminative piece framing Rich Perry's tenor saxophone playing. "Cerulean Skies" celebrates the joyful arrival of migratory visitors to New York's Central Park. Finally, the title piece features Steve Wilson's soprano saxophone over rich orchestral writing reflecting a mood of deep personal sadness but an eventually uplifting realisation. The musicians in the orchestra - most of whom have worked with Maria before - perform superbly, to do justice to her excellent material. Bob Wright, UK

Maria Schneider has done it again. On a scale of 1 to 10 I am rating this production a 10 and a 5 Star rating from Downbeat Magazine and no I am not the music critic for that magazine. Keep up the excellent composing Ms. Schneider. Someday we will meet and I will be able to give her the appropriate accolade for her composing skills. You must first be a good listener and without a doubt she is!

3 1/2 Stars. Jazz Times (magazine) rated this the #2 jazz album of 2007, ahead of acclaimed recordings by McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, and others. It was also rated ahead of several excellent big band recordings that year, including one I especially like by Charles Tolliver's group. (Jazz Times' # 1 album of 2007 was the late Michael Brecker's PILGRIMAGE.) So, although I was not familar with Maria Schneider, I had fairly high expectations upon ordering this CD. (It was also mildly exciting to order it because of its limited availability-not in your local stores; only through a "fan-based" website.)

The music IS lovely and often interesting (especially track 2, with its unusual and appealing Latin rhythm). The arrangements and orchestrations are very good, and there's some nice soloing by several different musicians. At times, the music harkens back to Gil Evans; occasionally, the lush colors and sonorities even remind me of John Scofield's fine album QUIET. Not infrequently, though, I detect a "new age" influence--and it's not just the many bird calls. (Schneider, in fact, alludes to a new age influence in her liner notes.) Personally, I don't care much for the new age thing (I find it a trifle boring), but if you're OK with it, you might really like this music. I'm lukewarm.

I had this album for a year or so I guess and had listened to it a couple times and had mixed feelings. Sometimes I liked it, sometimes I thought it was a klunker.

I think part of it is a matter of what mood you are in and another may have to do with the fact that you can't pigeonhole it, hence if you have a certain sense of what good jazz is, this album probably won't fill the bill unless you are open to it on its own terms.

Where was my head at when I was indifferent toward this music? As I have been building up my Jazz CD collection lately I dusted off my Maria Scheider albums and gave them a fresh start. They absolutely blow me away. And of the three I have so far (Evanescence, Allegresse, and Blue Sky), I like this one the best.

Within Schneider's repertoire there is a certain style of song that I love the most, namely one that is undergirded by a very simple and beautiful melody and then goes off into new thematic paths while the melody remains as a distant anchor.

I find that over time I tend to shift my preferences on the songs. I had felt that The Pretty Road was the best song not only on this album but of everything I had heard by Schneider. I am now getting to appreciate Rich's Piece and Cerulean Skies more for their emotional depth as opposed to the more simple and extroverted melody of The Pretty Road. Sky Blue is a great song. Aires de Lando is one I haven't taken to quite as much so far, but that could be due to not yet being open enough to the different style compared to most of Schneider's work.

I would like to also mention, there is the "world" or "new age" aspect to this music but don't put so much focus on that you fail to recognize the jazz here. While they approach it from an unusual angle, this is jazz. And these musicians are excellent jazz musicians.

I suppose a crude analogy would be do you like jazz fusion? Many jazz musicians took to it and saw it as a natural evolutionary path from be bop. Not everyone was happy, especially Wynton Marsalis. All I can say is that I like fusion and there are an awful lot of the finest jazz musicians who found it a natural vehicle for their talent.

Well, Maria Schneider has taken jazz on yet another path. And it is one I love. I hope to see her orchestra live at some point in time. Having only recently gotten back to jazz appreciation after listening mostly to classical music for many years, I only recently became aware of what a great jazz artist Michael Brecker was and never got to see him live.

I expect Schneider has a long and productive career ahead of her. It seems to me that jazz is the classical music that is active and vibrant today. Where are today's Mahler and Sibelius? If classical composers of that caliber existed today I expect with the proliferation of media that I would have heard of them.

But it seems that in this era, it is jazz that is at the forefront of classical music composition. Michael Brecker, John McLaughlin, McCoy Tyner, probably numerous other jazz artists I am not very familiar with, and last but not least Maria Schneider, perhaps the jazz composer who most fits the category of a classicist.

In her liner notes, Schneider comments that some have likened her music to that of Mahler. I don't have the background in music theory to be able to judge that. But, in one respect I think an analogy is worth considering. I believe Mahler was the best music composer of his time. I believe Schneider is a legitimate candidate for that distinction today.

A friend loaned me his copy of this CD and the first time I heard it I knew I had to buy one for myself.

I just love it. I played it a lot in the dark hours of the night while recovering from a knee replacement.

Overview:
Sky Blue is another well written Maria Schneider album. Once again Schneider has written complex hand crafted tunes for her big band that interweave many different parts and feature some great soloists. The overall style of this album is world jazz fusion. Schneider has incorporated many sounds and styles of South America into this release. Over twenty musicians play on Sky Blue, including personal favorites, Donny McCaslin on tener sax & clarinet, and guitarist Ben Monder. Big band fans, and Schneider fans alike will enjoy this recent release and should add it to their collection. However, jazz fans who are only considering this album because of the rave reviews it received in many magazines and online publications may want to reconsider. While this is a nice album, it doesn't come close to being one of the top CDs of 2007.

Song Highlights:
Aires de Lando: The "Aires" here no doubt refers to Buenos Aires as this song incorporates many latin themes and tango elements. Schneider has beautifully integrated latin rhythms and tango moods into wonderful South American fusion. The accordian integration is particullary nice.

Rich's Piece: This song has some really nice moody horn arrangements that somewhat resemeble arrangements from Mile Davis and Gill Evans Porgy and Bess. Over the top of these somber horns Rich Perry has a brilliant sax solo.

Cerulean Skies: This is the song which received the most hype in the reviews of this album. Further it features Donny McCaslin (one of my favorite sax players) as a soloist as well as Gary Versace on an accoridian solo. I had extremely high expectations for this song and I was disappointed. The song opens with some bird calls and has the feel of the amazon rain forest. Some listeners may find this this to be a bit "new agey". Persoanlly I thinked it worked and the song was off to a good start. McCaslin then comes in with the first solo. The solo starts off nice, and McCaslin's solo starts to build. Its at this point that the song goes off track. As McCaslin's solo builds the backing arrangements are just annoying and cheesy and take away from the solo. After McCaslin is done it's accordian player Versace's turn. This section of the song is prety nice but seems a bit out of place. At this point the song is starting to seem a bit long and your only halfway through it. Cerulean Skies is the center piece of this album and it doesn't live up to the hype.

I could not agree more with the previous review , I'm not sure about new age music , but Maria is a genius in marketing , she made a cd so hard to get , than I jumped on the first chance to get it ( Itunes ...thank you ! ) Except the Brazilian track, which I like the most, I got lost in her music, did not really move me , maybe the length of it, 20 minutes tracks! Maybe the arrangement. A lot of noise for not so much music ......sorry! Maybe watching these musicians playing live might work better, but on cd, its a different story.
It's not a terrible project, probably a very personnelone , but honestly I did get it .