The SPCO Gets Jazzed

Thanks to the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s artistic partner Dawn Upshaw, two-time Grammy–winning jazz composer Maria Schneider is composing a new song cycle that will premiere this month. “I love Dawn,” Schneider says. “She is a classical musician who wants to breathe other worlds of music.”

According to Schneider, this new world will be very accessible for SPCO audiences. “My music is all about tonality,” she says. “When I was in school, I was such a tonal bird, I didn’t fit in. There was the feeling that in order to push the boundaries, you had to become more complex, more dense. I think the music has to become more personal.”

A native of Windom, Minnesota, Schneider studied classical composition at the University of Minnesota, but she had never written for voice before, let alone a classical orchestra. “I had never written for words, so I really needed a text I could get attached to. I am not a reader of poetry, but I know what kind of sentiment would fit with what I do, poetry that is very real. A friend recommended the Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade.”

Schneider says she found the composition process for the project surprisingly easy. “Words give a composition its rhythm, its sentiment, and even the rise and fall of the lines,” she says. And it’s the words that are her focus. “Too often music can obscure the text. The poetry gets overlooked. I hope audiences will dive into this folkloric poetry and experience the story. I hope I have brought the poems to life.”

Despite some initial terror, Schneider is thrilled to be collaborating with artists like Upshaw and the SPCO. “We live in such an eclectic age,” she says. “It’s a great time to be a composer. All the barriers are down.”

Oct 23–25. Ordway Center for Performing Arts, 345 Washington St., St. Paul, 651-291-1144