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Maria Baptist
Maria Baptist: Essays on Jazz
by Geno Thackara
If a title such as Essays on Jazz might suggest something dry or academic (or, god forbid, pretentious), perish the thought. For one thing, Maria Baptist has spent decades as a professor of music and knows her stuff enough to live up to the name. For another, she has spent even more time living the jazz life on club stages and bandstands, developing a piano style which is endlessly clever and classy. This richly dynamic live set shows that even ...
read moreMaria Baptist and Jan von Klewitz: Facing Duality
by Geno Thackara
In a way it seems out of nowhere, and in a way it was a long time coming. While Maria Baptist has ranged from solo to trio to big band and more, throughout her career at the piano, Jan von Klewitz's saxophone has been a more steady presence beside her than than most. He came on board with Baptist's ongoing Jazz Orchestra on its debut Here and Now (self produced, 2016), then provided the plus-one when her trio was expanded ...
read moreMaria Baptist: Here & Now 2
by Geno Thackara
Maria Baptist and big bands go way back. From a lifelong fascination with orchestras to several large-ensemble collaborations and academic competitions from the '90s onward, she's always been drawn to handling impressive quantities of brass. Whatever else she gets up to--and there's certainly no shortage of other different projects to keep rotating among--her Jazz Orchestra stays working in the background throughout. This ensemble has steadily performed in jny: Berlin each month since 2015. Three years on from the first Here ...
read moreMaria Baptist: Resonance
by Geno Thackara
Maria Baptist has several favorite contexts for her piano--trio, trio-plus-one, solo or with an orchestra--and yet there's always a certain throughline that comes through in any setting. It's a sophisticated voice that's highly emotional, evocative and vivid as life. Following on from a successful year of profile-building and highly visible gigs, Baptist goes small-scale here for her most cozy and intimate recording yet. It's themed around the practice of meditation, being fully present in one's surroundings and open ...
read moreMaria Baptist: Music for Jazz Orchestra
by Jack Bowers
Like it or not, a new wave of young composer / arrangers has surfaced, scrupulously guiding big bands into heretofore uncharted waters, now and then smooth, at other times choppy, but always intriguing and inspired. Maria Schneider, George Gruntz, Jim McNeely and Carla Bley were among the pacesetters, followed in short order by such (relative) newcomers as Satoko Fujii, Darcy James Argue, Jamie Begian, Keith Karns, Stan Sulzmann, Cecilia Coleman, Magnus Lindgren, Colin Byrne, John Daversa, Pete McGuinness, Gail Thompson, ...
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