The Maria Schneider Orchestra: The Thompson Fields | Album Review

The Thompson Fields
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Artist: Maria Schneider Orchestra
Genre: Jazz
Label: ArtistShare

Though a longtime New Yorker, composer Maria Schneider is still a midwesterner at heart.

Her latest work for the celebrated ensemble that bears her name (the first in eight years) is an act of remembrance, a pastoral suite that conjures Schneider’s Minnesota upbringing and the limitless prairies of the title.

It is a mark of her unique talent that Schneider can take such personal and introspective themes and play them out in the rich sonorities of an 18-piece orchestra.

And in saxophonist Donny McCaslin, trombonist Marshall Gilkes and guitarist Lage Lund, she has musicians who can respond in kind.

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Veering from modernist tone experiments to the epic sweep of American romanticism, The Thompson Fields again shows that Schneider has few, if any, peers in contemporary big band writing.

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Cormac Larkin

Cormac Larkin

Cormac Larkin, a contributor to The Irish Times, is a musician, writer and director