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Rephrasing: Aria Schneider is a highly acclaimed jazz orchestra composer, known for her collaborations with David Bowie and seven Grammy wins. However, her work remains relatively unknown due to her intentional decision to keep it that way.
During the early 2000s, Schneider was upset about the illegal sharing of files. However, at 63 years old, she is now taking on streaming platforms. She believes that their business models, which rely on exchanging data, pose a threat to democracy, ideas, and creativity.
In 2014, Schneider spoke to the US Congress about the ongoing challenge of removing her music from filesharing websites, likening it to a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. She has since taken legal action, including a three-year fight to grant smaller copyright holders access to YouTube’s content ID system for identifying copyright-infringing videos. However, this lawsuit was ultimately dismissed in June 2023, just before it was set to go to trial.
It is not unexpected that the Maria Schneider Orchestra’s anniversary album, Decades, is not accessible for streaming like her other music. It is also not sold in physical record stores. The only way to purchase the triple LP is through the ArtistShare crowdfunding platform, which Schneider has been using for over 20 years.
The musician, performer, and pianist started promoting her cause in response to the emergence of websites like Napster and Limewire that offered free access to music. She recalls that many people at the time believed that all musicians should simply give away their music for free. However, she disagrees, highlighting the financial investment, time, and emotional toll that goes into creating music.
For the past twenty years, Schneider has consistently expressed these sentiments, yet her passion remains unwavering. In a recorded interview from her residence in New York, positioned before a grand bookcase displaying some of her Grammy awards, she speaks fervently, her words cascading and her voice faltering at times as she reaches the climax of her argument.
As a response to filesharing, Brian Camelio, a recording producer, founded ArtistShare in 2000 with Schneider as the inaugural artist. In addition to providing fairer compensation for artists and increasing transparency about music consumption, fans who pre-ordered music would also have the opportunity to gain insights into the creative process of the musicians.
Schneider experienced the process of composing as a solitary and sometimes difficult task. She expressed, “There is nothing worse than when ideas are lacking. It feels like the ultimate defeat.” One evening, her father called her after keeping up with her updates and voiced his concern. He questioned, “Who would want to purchase from someone who claims they are unsure of their writing abilities?”
However, she successfully overcame obstacles and in 2005, her album Concert in the Garden became the first to be funded by a crowd and the first to be released exclusively through the internet, to receive a Grammy award. The platform ArtistShare did not gain widespread popularity and may seem outdated to many. According to Schneider, being a musician now requires giving away music for free in order to gain visibility. Despite this, she is part of a small group of musicians, such as Joanna Newsom, who choose to stay off streaming sites and prioritize making a decent income solely through their art.
According to her, other individuals are employed by corporations that are aware that music and movies are what keep people glued to their screens. They used us as a means to collect data, which they then utilized for targeted advertising. One company that she specifically criticizes is Spotify, which she believes is not just a music publishing company, but also a large data company. She refers to an employee who revealed that in the early stages of the company, three-quarters of the staff were data analysts. She proposes that any trade of personal data for musical content should be subject to taxation, as she stated in a 2020 op-ed for the Star Tribune in Minnesota: “We are exchanging something of value for something else of value.” However, she prefers if music was not tainted by these transactions and was valued differently.
She expresses her disappointment that many musicians simply accepted this issue without resistance. Unlike them, she never gave in to the situation. If a larger percentage of musicians had stood up like she did, the world would be a different place.
“Display the image in full screen mode”
Schneider spent her childhood in Windom, a small rural city in Minnesota. She remembers looking out the window at the empty highway, imagining that every car passing by was a talent scout from New York. Despite the quiet surroundings, she saw her hometown as the center of the world and found inspiration in the wide open spaces. “It may seem silly now,” she reflects, “but that environment really sparked my imagination.”
Her early musical memories are precise, like the first time she heard the crunchy, sharp 11 chord that later would become an important harmonic colour in her compositional palette. “It was like tasting a pickle for the first time: at first eww, and then ooh.” Early experiences of flying – with her father, who had a small company aircraft for his job in agriculture – would also shape her music, which cycles through feelings of acceleration, taking off, coasting, reflection, deceleration and landing.
Schneider’s music has a topographical quality to it. Her album The Thompson Fields drew inspiration from Minnesota’s landscapes, and her overall body of work evokes a sense of a vast landscape. Instead of featuring individual band members taking turns with heroic solos, Schneider blends her ensemble together to create sweeping soundscapes. She attributes this approach to jazz composer Bob Brookmeyer, who, along with Gil Evans, challenged traditional form in big band music. Schneider explains that she strives to create music that goes beyond individual performances and brings everyone together in a collaborative “us” zone.
In 2014, David Bowie visited Schneider’s apartment to collaborate on a song after hearing her orchestra in New York and being a fan of her earlier, darker music. When she asked for ideas, he playfully suggested the theme of vampires.
“David wanted dark and I went dark,” Schneider remembers. What followed – the 2014 single Sue (Or In a Season of Crime), which would appear on his final album Blackstar – marked a shift. Schneider credits Bowie with her rediscovery of the grittier sound she had avoided in recent compositions.
“Upon David’s arrival, he demonstrated that darkness can be enjoyable,” she recalls. Right after Schneider completed The Thompson Fields – the pinnacle of her tranquil, noticeably unrefined phase of music – Sue came on the airwaves. “It was quite a contrast. I sent David an email asking: ‘What have you done to me?’ He responded: ‘My task here is finished.'”
She expresses, “I sense like he broke me,” and perhaps not in a positive manner.” When she channeled that emotion into her own musical compositions, it reflected a tinge of frustration: her works Data Lords (2016) and Don’t Be Evil (2017), a sarcastic nod to Google’s previous unofficial slogan.
Listening to Decades, you are struck by a body of work that thrills even throughout its bleakest passages – those knotty works that an algorithm may well ignore. In the liner notes, Schneider writes: “Even after all these years of writing, it’s still a mystery how written music, combined with performance, can impart the very essence of one’s emotional experience while creating the piece. One thing I know is AI won’t manage that.”
Decades by Maria Schneider is available for purchase at Artistshare.com.
Source: theguardian.com
