Denver Public Library: Maria Schneider Orchestra
The Denver Public Library recommends these library resources to enhance your experience with the Maria Schneider Orchestra.
READ
Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century by Nate Chinen
Chinen, a NPR and New York Times critic and long-time advocate of Maria Schneider, explores the exciting directions jazz is expanding in with this incisive survey of its past, present, and future.
WATCH
Buena Vista Social Club dir. Wim Wenders (2000)
Wim Wenders' documentary Buena Vista Social Club is about the adventures of Ry Cooder in Cuba. Cooder, best remembered by film fans for the wailing slide guitar theme of Wenders' Paris, Texas, went to Cuba in 1996 to meet with some legendary 'soneros' musicians of the '30s, '40s and '50s. The result was the album Buena Vista Social Club, recorded with such colorful characters as the 90-year-old singer/guitarist Compay Segundo, guitarist Eliades Ochoa, baritone Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo, "the Cuban Edith Piaf." The album won a Grammy, and in this refreshing documentary, Wim Wenders shows these exceptional musicians in their hometown, following them into their usual hang-outs as well as to concerts in Amsterdam and New York's Carnegie Hall, capturing their incredible vitality.
LISTEN
Jazz Music Library (Database) - The largest and most comprehensive collection of streaming jazz available online, with thousands of jazz artists, ensembles, albums, and genres.
Steven Feifke and Bijon Watson present Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra by Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra.
Steven Feifke (pianist, composer, arranger/orchestrator and conductor) and Bijon Watson (lead trumpet) brought together a big band featuring some of the most well-known names in all of jazz.
Democratic Vistas by the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra
The ninth CD from the orchestra is a musical exploration of the American socio-political situation.
DOWNLOAD
Stream all the options below on Kanopy, free to all Denver residents with your library card.
A collection of short jazz films from the Cohen Film Collection featuring performers such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Bessie Smith.
The Girls in the Band, dir. Judy Chaikin (2013)
This 2013 documentary tells the poignant, untold stories of female jazz and big band instrumentalists and their fascinating, history-making journeys from the late 30s to the 2010s. The many first-hand accounts of the challenges faced by these talented women provide a glimpse into decades of racism and sexism that have existed in America.
Dedicated to Chaos, dir. Ken Burns (2000)
This film chronicles young music rebels who take jazz in startling new directions in the 1940s, but their innovations are largely unnoticed amidst the war effort. In Europe, jazz is banned by the Nazis and embraced by their opponents as a symbol of freedom and democracy.