Maria Schneider seems to do the impossible, at least as the 21st century is concerned--she's continually lead, maintained and recorded several outstanding albums with big band, an actual large scale jazz orchestra. Who knew this was possible in this day and age??
"Sky Blue", her new 2007 offering, seems to be the strongest effort yet: at once lush, impressively scored and voiced, buoyant and substantive, sufficiently satiated with, if not an in-the-pocket Basie-like groove, then at least rythmically perculating in her own way. And, less we forget, enough room for the soloists, which in the spirit of Ellington, Maria seems to base the compositions on the actual merits and strengths of her musicians.
In short, it's her prettiest and most intriguing record to date.
In the Gil Evans tradition, she's awlays walked a tight-rope, musically. Schooled in the European classical music raison-d'etre as well as the jazz traditons, her musical choices have veered towards the gently-swaying, pastel colored hues typical of pastorally-inclined music. And yet, possessing suffient weight and substance such that the note choice combinations do not float meagerly, aimlessly, listlessly and, ultimately, ineffectually into the ether, never to be seen or heard from again, like many an ECM record.
Perhaps she is the modern personification of what Gunther Schuller, John Lewis and the rest were getting at when they originated the "Third Stream" all those decades ago....
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