January 19, 2009
Grammy winner Maria Schneider returns to Eastman
Jazz artist shares ideas on engaging the entrepreneurial mind
jwedow@ur.rochester.edu
Maria Schneider’s story is an example of what can be accomplished by thinking outside the box—or outside the record label, in her case.
After getting her master’s degree from the Eastman School in 1985, Schneider headed to New York City where she worked on various musical projects and started the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra. The group became a weekly fixture at Visiones in Greenwich Village and later traveled to festivals across Europe and around the world.
Schneider’s debut recording, Evanescence, was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 1995. Her second and third recordings, Coming About and Allégresse, were also nominated for Grammys.
In the midst of such success, Schneider was about to break new ground—both as a businesswoman and a musician. The composer-performer surveyed the changing world of music and the Internet and decided to embark down a new path. She was one of the first artists to produce a CD using the ArtistShare model, in which consumers finance projects in exchange for Web access to the artist’s creative process. The move paid off—in 2005, Schneider became the first artist to win a Grammy Award for an album distributed entirely over the Internet.
The album, Concert in the Garden, was also named Jazz Album of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association, which also named Schneider Composer of the Year and Arranger of the Year and named her group Large Jazz Ensemble of the Year. Schneider’s second Grammy came for a composition on her album Sky Blue, also fan-funded and distributed through ArtistShare.
Schneider’s success story will be highlighted this month at the workshop, “Preparing the Generation-E Musician . . . The Place of Entrepreneurship in the Higher Education Music School Curriculum,” from January 22 to 24 at the Eastman School.
“Maria is very entrepreneurial and forward thinking,” says Ramon Ricker, director of Eastman’s Institute for Music Leadership, which is sponsoring the event. “She’ll be talking about the steps she took to bypass the major record labels, and to take control of her music, by making it available on the Internet.”
The conference is expected to draw representatives from 25 of the nation’s premier music institutions. Over three days, deans, administrators, and students will work together to identify how they can foster entrepreneurial thinking in their institutions.
Workshop participants also will get to see Schneider in concert. Schneider is bringing her 18-piece jazz orchestra for a public concert at 8 p.m. January 23 at Eastman Theatre. “Since all the workshop participants are musicians, we wanted to make sure we included music.”
The Institute for Music Leadership is partnering with the Rochester International Jazz Festival to present the concert, and proceeds will benefit the school’s jazz scholarship fund.
The conference builds on one led by Eastman School officials prior to a November 2007 conference in Salt Lake City. Nearly 60 administrators attended that session, in which they were urged to explore entrepreneurial-like programs in their existing curriculums and to indentify and build upon that new concept.
At the upcoming workshop, participants from such schools as the Curtis Institute of Music and the New England Conservatory will work together to identify how they can foster entrepreneurial thinking in their institutions. The group will be guided by Babson College entrepreneurship professor Heidi Neck, who is leading the workshop sessions.
An expert on entrepreneurship education and a frequent presenter on topics including corporate and social entrepreneurship and radical innovation, Neck is the Jeffry A. Timmons Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Babson. She will lead sessions in which participants will explore what it takes to make both an entrepreneurial teacher and school. Faculty and students will work together in teams to come up with suggestions for integrating entrepreneurship into music curriculums, and then will make brief presentations pitching their ideas to the other participants.
“Changes in the music world demand a new kind of professional preparation,” says Douglas Lowry, dean of the Eastman School. “Not only do students need a bridge between their education and their careers, they must be equipped with imagination, with zeal to seek out and make opportunities, and with a strong desire to seek innovative unorthodox solutions to problems.”
For more information on the conference or to get tickets to Schneider’s January 23 performance, visit www.esm.rochester.edu/iml.
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