Maria Schneider Orchestra

Audiences were wowed by Maria Schneider Orchestra’s last Celebrity Series appearance in 2014, and we’ve been eagerly awaiting their return. A 2019 NEA Jazz Master and five-time Grammy award winner, Schneider is one of the jazz world’s most respected and original voices.

She continues to make a name for herself as a female composer and bandleader in a male-dominated field, collaborating with partners as varied as the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and David Bowie. The New York Times described her accomplished and cohesive 18-piece Maria Schneider Orchestra as “a touchstone for large-ensemble designs in jazz.”  

For this performance, Schneider brings her ensemble to Sanders Theatre for the Boston-area premiere of her latest project, Data Lords, commissioned by the Library of Congress. Her first recording since the Grammy award-winning The Thompson Fields, Data Lords is Schneider’s statement on the tension between our digital environment and the natural world. The piece gets its name from a term that Schneider—a champion of self-publishing to establish her own rights as a creator in the digital age—uses to describe major music conglomerates and their problematic ecology. 

Be among the first to experience this extraordinary artist’s vital and relevant new work and her continued search for meaning and beauty.

Maria Schneider Orchestra Personnel

Maria Schneider, composer/conductor 

Steve Wilson, alto saxophone  

Dave Pietro, alto saxophone 

Rich Perry, tenor saxophone 

Donny McCaslin, tenor saxophone 

Scott Robinson, baritone saxophone 

Greg Gisbert, trumpet

Michale Dudley, trumpet

Nadje Noordhuis, trumet

Jonathan Heim, trumpet

Keith O'Quinn, trombone 

Ryan Keberle, trombone 

Marshall Gilkes, trombone 

George Flynn, bass trombone 

Julien Labro, accordion 

Jeff Miles, guitar 

Gary Versace, piano 

Jay Anderson, bass 

Johnathan Blake, drums 

The performance is generously sponsored by an anonymous donor.