Joel McNeely

Here is a plug, no, a tip, a really good tip, for those who love jazz, or those who love creative instrumental music, or for that matter, anyone who has come to this blog because they trust me enough to take my recommendation. My dear friend Maria Schneider has a new record out, called Sky Blue, which if you are remotely in any of the above categories, you simply must get.

Maria's ensemble is a fairly standard big band configuration, however I don't think many would hear this music as anything approaching conventional big band music. To my ear it's more orchestral. Anyway, the compositions are long-form, 10-22 minutes in length. Don't go in looking for the standard intro A,A,B,A long improvising sections and then the whole thing over again with a coda tacked on. These are fully developed compositions, which often require slowing down one's expectation mechanism and settling in for a journey.

I won't review piece by piece here, (they're all great) but for me standouts are Rich's Piece, which is like dark, dark bitter chocolate, delicious with a lingering bite and redolent of something distantly melancholy and Cerulean Skies which reminds me of Ravel. Also, for you music heads, try, just try and figure out the meter (meters) on Aires de Lando. Lot's o luck.

The playing is superb. One of the things I love about Maria's writing is that she seems to know her players so deeply and she so often finds a way to feature them in a way that sends them soaring. Rich Perry and Donny McCaslin, the two tenor players, blow my mind. And I love the addition of the accordion. It's an unexpected strange color, which by the end of the record feels integral.

Lastly, if you're smart enough to take me up on this tip and get this record, go for the expanded version. It has two beautiful booklets, one with a diary of the compositional process and thematic sketches, and the other, a photo journal of the recording process. Maria finances her recordings herself, eliminating record company intervention in her creative process, another reason why this project is so extraordinary and deserves support. We need artists like this to keep going, to keep writing and playing, and to keep making our world a more beautiful place.