Schneider Maria Lynn, *27 XI 1960 Windom (Minnesota), American composer, jazz arranger, conductor. She learned to play the piano, clarinet, and violin; studied music theory and composition at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and then, from 1983, jazz composition and contemporary media techniques at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. After graduating in 1985, she moved to New York, where she became G. Evans’s assistant (until the artist’s death in 1988). In 1986–91, she studied arrangement with B. Brookmeyer; during this time, she composed and wrote arrangements for the Village Vanguard Orchestra. In 1991, she was awarded the Gil Evans Fellowship. In 1992, she founded her own big band, with which she performed and recorded albums (Evanescence, 1992; Coming About, 1995). In 1995, she composed the suite Scenes from Childhood (the premiere took place during the Monterey Jazz Festival). She gave concerts in Europe and the Far East; she conducted the Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra (1994), the Orchestre National de Jazz in Paris and big bands, among others, in Denmark, Sweden and Finland. In 2000–2020, she recorded the albums: Sky Blue (2007), Winter Morning Walks (2013), The Thomson Fields (2015), Data Lords (2020). She performed in Warsaw with Krzysztof Herdzin’s Polish Jazz Orchestra (2009), Kraków with NDR Big Band (2009) and Bielsko-Biała (2012, 2015).
Schneider’s compositions and arranging style refer to mainstream big band music and the aesthetics of G. Evans, whose works she often introduces into the repertoire. She has received many awards and distinctions – in 1996, she was recognised as the composer and arranger of the year by “Down Beat” magazine, and in 2004 she won a Grammy for the album Concert in the Garden (she received a total of 10 statuettes).
