Maria Schneider was born in 1960 in the North-American state of Minnesota and, after her formative period in music, she was professionally introduced to the jazz circuit by the mythical composer Gil Evans, to whom she worked as assistant and with whom she collaborated, among other works, in composing the soundtrack of Martin Scorcese’s masterpiece “The Color of Money” and in the arrangements for Sting’s live concerts. In 1988, Schneider founded her first band, in partnership with trombonist John Fedchock, and, four years later, the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra was born. Her recording debut under her own name came with the release of the album “Evanescence” (1994) and her first major moment of institutional consecration in the mainstream jazz circuit arrived with her first Grammy for Best large Jazz Ensemble for the album “Concert In The Park” – a work that combines jazz and classical tradition with influences from Brazilian music and flamenco, and which, in 2019, was selected for preservation by the Library of the Congress of the United States of America given its extraordinary “cultural, historical and aesthetical relevance”. In parallel to her activity as composer and conductor, Schneider has also collaborated over time with numerous reputed orchestras and artists, among which it is fair to highlight, due to its symbolical dimension, her contribution to the arrangements of the album “Blackstar”, the last (and testamentary) creative document produced by the great pop artist David Bowie. In addition to the superlative dimension of her creative work, it is also important to dedicate a final word to Maria Schneider’s activism on behalf of the protection of intellectual property rights and her denouncement of the predatory practices of the new digital monopolies, a cause of undeniable relevance in the present cultural context.

In this 33rd edition of Guimarães Jazz, the orchestra responsible for interpretating Maria Schneider’s composition will be the Clasijazz Big Band, a relatively recent formation born from the Clasijazz Project, an Andalusian artistic institution active in the promotion of jazz and improvised music in Spain which, in the year of 2020, evolved into a professional format that brings together seventeen prestigious Spanish musicians. The activity of this big band is centered on collaborations with guest musicians and conductors, interpreting either the classical repertoire of historic jazz musicians (such as Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman or Duke Ellington, among others) or the original work of contemporary composers.