The Celebrity Series of Boston Present the Maria Schneider Orchestra, 4/26

Celebrity Series of Boston will present the Maria Schneider Orchestra on Saturday, April 26, 2014 at 8pm at Berklee Performance Center, 136 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, MA. Sponsored by Donna and Mike Egan.

Tickets to see the Maria Schneider Orchestra start at $30, and are available online at www.celebrityseries.org, by calling CelebrityCharge at (617) 482-6661 Monday-Friday 10:00 a.m.- 4:00 p.m., or at the Berklee Performance Center Box Office, 136 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, MA.

This performance is the second appearance of the Maria Schneider Orchestra with the Celebrity Series of Boston; they most recently appeared in 2007.

Maria Schneider's music has been hailed by critics as "evocative, majestic, magical, heart-stoppingly gorgeous, and beyond categorization." She and her orchestra became widely known starting in 1994 when they released their first recording, 'Evanescence.' With that recording, Schneider began to develop her personal way of writing for her 17-member collective, made up of many of the finest musicians in jazz today, tailoring her compositions to distinctly highlight the uniquely creative voices of the group. Subsequently, the Maria Schneider Orchestra has performed at festivals and concert halls worldwide. She herself has received numerous commissions and guest conducting invites, working with over 85 groups from over 30 countries spanning Europe, South America, Australia, Asia and North America.

Schneider's music blurs the lines between genres, and as a result, her long list of commissioners have become quite varied: the Norrbotten Big Band and Danish Radio Orchestra with Toots Thielemans and Ivan Lins, the Metropole Orchestra in the Netherlands, Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra (El Viento), Monterey Jazz Festival (Scenes from Childhood), The American Dance Festival (for dance company, Pilobolus - Dissolution), University of Miami Concert Jazz Band (Three Romances), Hunter College (Concert in the Garden, Sky Blue), Jazz at Lincoln Center (Buleria, Soleá y Rumba), Los Angeles Philharmonic Association (Aires de Lando), Peter Sellars' New Crowned Hope Festival (Vienna's Mozart Festival-Cerulean Skies), Kronos Quartet (String Quartet No. 1), The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra with soprano, Dawn Upshaw (Carlos Drummond de Andrade Stories) and most recently, the Ojai Festival, the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Cal Performances (Winter Morning Walks), featuring soprano, Dawn Upshaw, and three musicians long associated with Schneider: pianist, Frank Kimbrough, bassist, Jay Anderson, and multi-instrumentalist, Scott Robinson.

Schneider's latest fan-funded recording with Dawn Upshaw ('Winter Morning Walks') earned three 2014 GRAMMY Awards: Best Contemporary Classical Composition ('Winter Morning Walks'), Best Classical Vocal Performance (Dawn Upshaw), and Best Engineered Recording/Classical (David Frost, Brian Losch, Tim Martyn).

Schneider and her orchestra have a distinguished recording career with 10 GRAMMY nominations and three GRAMMY awards. Unique funding of projects has become a hallmark for Schneider through the trend-setting company, ArtistShare®. For these projects, she documents her creative process for participating fans, who "fan-fund" her recordings through pre-orders. She's now composed four works for her own orchestra with the participation of commissioners coming directly from her ArtistShare® website fan base. Her album, Concert in the Garden (2004) became historic as the first recording to win a GRAMMY with Internet-only sales. Even more significantly, it blazed the "fan-funding" trail as ArtistShare's® first release. Her albums, Concert in the Garden and Sky Blue were both named "Jazz Album of the Year" by the Jazz Journalists Association and DOWNBEAT Critics Poll, and received wide critical acclaim.

In 2012, her alma mater, the University of Minnesota, awarded Schneider an honorary doctorate.

About Celebrity Series of Boston

Celebrity Series of Boston was founded in 1938 by pianist and impresario Aaron Richmond. Over the course of its 75-year history, Celebrity Series has presented an array of the world's greatest performing artists, including Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arturo Toscanini, Ignace Paderewski, Artur Rubenstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Glenn Gould, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Andrés Segovia, Kirsten Flagstad, Marian Anderson, Luciano Pavarotti, Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Martha Graham, Ballet Russe De Monte Carlo, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Mstislav Rostropovich, and the New York City Opera Company.

The Celebrity Series has been bringing the very best performers-from orchestras and chamber ensembles, vocal and piano music, to dance companies, jazz, and more-to Boston's major concert halls for 75 years. The Celebrity Series of Boston believes in the power of excellence and innovation in the performing arts to enrich life experiences, transform lives and build better communities. Through its education initiatives, the Celebrity Series seeks to build a community of Greater Boston where the performing arts are a valued, lifelong, shared experience-on stages, in schools, at home- everywhere. For more information on Celebrity Series of Boston, call (617) 482-2595 or visit us online at www.celebrityseries.org.

The Celebrity Series of Boston, Inc. receives generous support from Amy and Joshua Boger; Eleanor and Frank Pao; Donna and Mike Egan; Susanne Marcus Collins Foundation; The Little Family Foundation; Tufts Health Plan; Foley & Lardner LLP; The John S. and Cynthia Reed Foundation; First Republic Bank; The Peabody Foundation; Charlesbank Capital Partners; PTC, The D.L. Saunders Real Estate Corp; Massachusetts Cultural Council; Vertex Pharmaceuticals; New England Foundation for the Arts.

To post a comment, you must register and login.