Maria Schneider Orchestra, winner of 2 Grammy Awards this year, returns to Eisenhower April 14 with debut of composition
The Maria Schneider Orchestra, called a national treasure by NPR, will perform a concert featuring the world premiere of a work co-commissioned by the Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 14, in Eisenhower Auditorium.
When Schneider and her musicians appeared at Eisenhower in 2006, they performed “The ‘Pretty’ Road,” a piece also co-commissioned by the Center for the Performing Arts. For this performance, the musicians will perform a new work funded by Penn State, Hopkins Center for the Arts at New Hampshire’s Dartmouth College, International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, Connecticut, and Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vermont.
Purchase tickets, which are $42 for an adult, $17 for a University Park student, and $32 for a person 18 and younger. A grant from the University Park Allocation Committee makes Penn State student prices possible.
In 2016, Schneider won Grammys for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album for “The Thompson Fields” and Best Arrangement, Instrumentals or Vocals, for her work with David Bowie on his single “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)” from the album “Blackstar.”
Schneider’s works usually lean toward the simplicity of beauty and emotion (the nature of birds and their songs on “Sky Blue” or a sense of nostalgia for home on “The Thompson Fields”), but the Bowie collaboration introduced her to a new place in her writing.
“He might have brought my dark side out,” she told MinnPost. “Maybe my music will get incredibly dark now, because it was sort of fun.”
In total, Schneider and her orchestra have taken home five Grammys and 12 nominations. The group made history with “Concert in the Garden,” which was available only online but won a 2005 Grammy for Best Large Jazz Ensemble; and again in 2014 for “Winter Morning Walks,” one of the first releases by an American orchestra to be fan-funded.
Schneider made a name for herself in the early 1990s by collaborating with jazz musician and composer Gil Evans, with whom she helped to score the film “The Color of Money” and to create music for Sting. In 1994, she and her orchestra debuted with the studio album “Evanescence.”
Watch a preview of the Maria Schneider Orchestra performing.
Artistic Viewpoints, an informal moderated discussion featuring Schneider, is offered in Eisenhower one hour before the concert and is free for ticket holders. Artistic Viewpoints regularly fills to capacity, so seating is available on a first-arrival basis.
Patricia Best and Thomas Ray sponsor the performance.
Find more information about the concert.