Maria Schneider's big-band landscapes

For those inspired by Maria Schneider's example, the composer and bandleader has a dash of harsh reality to offer: "I don't think anybody would ever say having a big band is a good idea. Let me tell you, it's not a good idea."

Of course, like many an innovator before her, Schneider has resolutely failed to follow her own advice. The Maria Schneider Orchestra has survived the vicissitudes of the jazz business for almost 15 years - in fact, it has thrived. Schneider's latest CD, "Sky Blue," released through the artist-centered online music service artistShare, was one of last year's musical highlights.

Despite its scale - 17 pieces, plus assorted guests - Schneider wields her orchestra like a paintbrush, creating wide swaths of color where most composers employ brute force. Schneider admits that the immense power of the big band can be a temptation, but she resists it.

"You definitely want moments where the band is just in your face," she said, "because that's part of what's exciting about a big band. But more and more I want lots of moments of space and air.

"I would venture to say at this point that if somebody heard the music for the first time, they might not think it was a big band. That's what I'm trying to do, because big band music a lot of times, to me, lacks nuance and emotion. It has excitement, it can have fun, it can have a certain kind of beauty, but not subtlety."

While she cites the obvious bandleader influences, from Count Basie to Thad Jones and especially Gil Evans, whose groundbreaking work with Miles Davis is cited as her most relevant antecedent, Schneider's individuality can perhaps be traced to the fact that she never intended to lead a big band in the first place.

"It sort of happened to me," she explained.

Born in Minnesota in 1960, Schneider studied at the University of Minnesota, University of Miami and the Eastman School of Music before relocating to New York in 1985.

"I loved the idea of music that was tightly composed but also had elements of improvisation in it," she said. The only ensembles available for such material at those institutions were the big bands.

Schneider's mentors included Evans and trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, a longtime member of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, who encouraged the young composer to contribute work to that band.

"I was never so in love with the big-band sound," Schneider said. "But by the time I started my own group, I had amassed all this music for big band, so to start over and change the instrumentation at that point would be crazy. There was a certain amount of momentum going that I wasn't about to turn around. Before I knew it, I was so ensconced in the big band there was no way to get the hell out."

As for finding her own voice, Schneider simply said, "I really want my music to make people feel like moving."

Her first experience seeing the American Ballet Theatre perform in Minneapolis was a defining moment in her development, she said.

"I saw those people dancing to that music, and I said, 'Oh, my God. I want to compose music that makes people feel like dancing.' I grew up dancing: I figure skated, I danced ballet, I tap- danced. So for me, music is movement."

Schneider's compositions conjure landscapes in the mind's eye. Even at epic lengths - nothing on "Sky Blue" clocks in under eight minutes, and the centerpiece, "Cerulean Skies," tops 20 - her pieces are monumental not in scale but in breadth.

While Schneider is apt to explain the programmatic ideas behind her tunes in liner notes or in-concert announcements, she said that these images are rarely consciously present as she composes.

"What happens a lot of times is that as I sit down to write, a musical idea will come up and, before I know it, attach itself to a memory. The music then becomes almost a score to that feeling or that memory."

While she sometimes translates those impressions to her musicians, she keeps such direction to a minimum, giving her trusted, long-term soloists the freedom to create on their own.

"Sometimes I give them directions, but I try not to bludgeon them so much," she said. "You don't want to overcontrol them. There should be some mystery in the music, some breathing room to interpret the music and find what it means for themselves.

"Music can conjure up images, but they don't have to be my images. It can be something even richer when each person attaches the music to their own life personally, and then it becomes something more collective."

The trust and respect she shares with her orchestra has seeped back into her own writing process.

"It's subliminal. I would compare it to talking with an old friend. Every time you talk to them, it's like putting on an old shoe. Maybe you haven't talked in months, but you have a certain way of settling into conversation. Working for years with musicians is like that.

"I feel very settled into who they are and how they respond to certain things that I write, so I don't have to try anymore. That's the beauty of it: it's completely natural, uncontrived."

Send e-mail to bradys@phillynews.com.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th Street and Ben Franklin Parkway, 5:45 and 7:15 tonight, free with regular museum admission of $14, 215-763-8100, www.philamuseum.org.