Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Blindfold Test: Buster Williams
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
Maria Schneider’s new release is a double album titled Data Lords.
(Photo: Briene Lermitte)As one of the top composer-arrangers on New York’s big band jazz scene, Maria Schneider has covered a vast swath of musical territory since her namesake orchestra began recruiting ace instrumentalists and captivating listeners in the early 1990s. Over a series of acclaimed recordings starting with her 1994 breakout album, Evanescence (Enja), Schneider’s writing style has evolved through multiple phases, incorporating the transparent tonal colors of Gil Evans’ large ensemble works, exploring folkloric flamenco rhythms, applying orchestral concepts to the big-band palette and embracing the wide-ranging pastoral beauty of Americana.
Schneider’s recent creative output has taken a more divergent approach—one that’s rooted in her ongoing struggles to deal with the dichotomies of modern living. As she finds herself ping-ponging between the polar extremes of today’s device-obsessed “digital world” and the simpler “natural world” she grew up with in rural Minnesota, she has fought to reclaim a sense of personal space where she can hear herself think and still connect with people in meaningful ways. She misses the deepness of times past.
Schneider also has emerged as an outspoken musicians’ advocate by calling out corporations such Google and YouTube—and other entities she refers to as “data lords”—for policies that she feels have been unfair to composers and creators of various kinds.
When DownBeat checked in with Schneider on the occasion of her Grammy-winning recording The Thompson Fields (ArtistShare) topping the Jazz Album category of the 2016 Readers Poll, she had recently completed a piece commissioned by the Library of Congress Da Capo Fund titled “Data Lords.” Now, a studio recording of that composition and a series of more recent conceptual pieces that grew out of her frustration with big data have been released as Data Lords, an elaborately packaged double album that explores the conflicting relationships between the digital and natural worlds.
“What I got from Percy was the dignity of playing the bass,” Buster Williams said of Percy Heath.
Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
Don and Maureen Sickler serve as the keepers of engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s flame at Van Gelder Studio, perhaps the most famous recording studio in jazz history.
Sep 3, 2025 12:02 PM
On the last Sunday of 2024, in the control room of Van Gelder Studio, Don and Maureen Sickler, co-owners since Rudy Van…
The Free Slave, Cosmos Nucleus and Sunset To Dawn: three classic Muse albums being reissued this fall by Timer Traveler Recordings.
Aug 26, 2025 1:32 PM
Record producer and “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman has launched his next endeavor, the archival label Time Traveler…
This year’s Jazz em Agosto set by the Darius Jones Trio captured the titular alto saxophonist at his most ferocious.
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The organizers of Lisbon, Portugal’s Jazz em Agosto Festival assume its audience is thoughtful and independent. Over…
Trio aRT with its avalanche of instrumentation: from left, Pheeroan akLaff, Scott Robinson and Julian Thayer.
Sep 3, 2025 12:03 PM
Trio aRT, a working unit since 1988, shockingly released its very first studio recording this summer. Recorded in…
