Solo artist Maria Schneider's good news; plus, Mose in Marblehead BY JON GARELICK

The jazz composer Maria Schneider has been making two kinds of news lately, one familiar and one new. The familiar news is that Schneider has just released one of her typically excellent orchestral albums, Concert in the Garden (ArtistShare). The different news is that, after releasing three acclaimed albums on the Munich-based Enja label, she’s selling her new album exclusively at her Web site, www.mariaschneider.com.

Although more and more artists of all stripes are selling their music on-line, Schneider’s arrangement is exclusive. Concerts in the Garden is not available in record stores or elsewhere on-line. And this "release" does not supplement any other record-company arrangement. Instead, the CD has been produced in a limited-edition run of 10,000 copies. Schneider’s partner in the deal is ArtistShare, which is run by jazz fan and computer programmer Brian Camelio, who maintains the Web site and has entered into a similar agreement with jazz guitar legend Jim Hall.

Schneider’s CDs have always sold respectably in jazz terms — averaging about 20,000 copies each. But she’s never made money on them, and in some cases, she’s lost money. In a piece in the New York Times earlier this month, Fred Kaplan reported that if the new album — which cost $87,000 to make — sells even 5000 copies, Schneider can break even. And if she sells out the edition, she could make "tens of thousands of dollars."

Over the phone from New York, Schneider was down-to-earth, and quick to laugh, when she confirmed to me the economics of her new arrangement. "The thing is, I can sell a lot less CDs than I ever sold before and make a lot more money." The new album sells for $16.95 at the Web site. Schneider pays Camilio a small fee for maintaining the site, but all revenues from the sales go directly to her. What’s more, Camilio has designed the site so that, aside from purchasing individual CDs, users can pay additional "Participant" fees at different levels ranging from $35 to $95 or more and get access to printed scores, streaming rehearsal sessions, a score analysis by Schneider, and a post-concert interview with Schneider and her mentor, composer/trombonist Bob Brookmeyer.

"The old business model was set up by the record companies, not the artists," Schneider tells me. "I’m modeling the way I do my business now." She adds that she had no quarrels with Enja and found its treatment of her equitable. "I was helping to invest, because they were expensive records [to make], and I wanted to do it the way I wanted to do it, so I coughed up the money willingly."

The limited-edition run, she says, was planned as a kind of incentive to potential buyers, though she now has some regrets that more weren’t manufactured. Still, the album will remain on-line as a download, with downloadable artwork also available. "Personally, that’s what I would do. The first place I look for something is on i-Tunes, and I put it on my i-Pod. I almost never walk in a record store any more." And the model she and Camilio have developed, she says, is not limited to artists. "Record companies could also expand what the artist has to offer beyond just a CD. But record companies are so attached to the old way of doing business — selling CDs in a store."

And what about the music on Concert in the Garden? Schneider continues to evince the influences of Brookmeyer and the late composer Gil Evans, for whom she worked as an assistant toward the end of his life. You could say she combines Evans’s exquisite sense of orchestral color with Brookmeyer’s formal elegance. Her personal expression comes from her immersion in South American and flamenco forms. Her Three Romances, for instance, suggests various dance forms, beginning with "Choro Dançado," in which the light, fast, oom-pah pulse of the Brazilian choro serves as a rhythmic spine for her various coloristic and melodic effusions. The album’s final piece, the 18-minute "Bulería, Soleá y Rumba," takes flamenco as a source of inspiration.

In Schneider’s compositions, solos emerge organically from her long forms, and as in the best jazz writing, it’s sometimes difficult to tell where the writing ends and the improvisations begin. On the second section of Three Romances, "Pas de Deux," Ingrid Jensen’s flügelhorn and Charles Pillow’s soprano sax intertwine beautifully, and on "Bulería, Soleá y Rumba," Donny McCaslin plays a tenor solo of slowly building intensity against a shifting backdrop of brass, reeds, and flutes. These constantly developing forms are worlds away from the traditional 32-bar song forms and 12-bar blues of the jazz tradition, where soloists improvise over the repetition of a relatively concise repeated chord pattern.

"Bob was the one who really helped pull me out of the concept of theme and variation. And that’s what jazz generally is — there’s a song, and everybody solos on that song." Schneider found those patterns anathema to her impulse as a storyteller — probably because she functions most as a writer and a conductor, not a player. "I’m trying to create pieces that take you from beginning to end with the soloists as part of that development."

Jazz composers who have attempted longer forms — Ellington, Mingus, and Brookmeyer among them — face the challenge of integrating solo improvisers. Unconcerned with sounding "jazz" enough, Schneider is content to develop an orchestral structure for several minutes before the entrance of a solo improvisation. "Bob was such a great teacher because he would always ask me the question ‘Why?’ I would bring in music, and he would say, ‘Why is there a solo here?’ And I would say, ‘I don’t know.’ And he would say, ‘Maria, there should only be a solo when the only thing that can happen is a solo.’ "

Anyone who has studied fiction writing has heard the same advice about dialogue. Schneider’s disciplined approach to structure is probably what keeps her pieces from feeling overblown, whatever their length. Three Romances is a kind of jazz suite, and its three nine-minute sections can be played independently. But it’s not unusual for Schneider to write pieces that push the 20-minute mark.

Of course, there’s another determining factor in a piece’s length. "People commission pieces of a certain length. They pay you by the minute, basically," she says, laughing. Then, turning serious, she adds, "Once I know what that length is, then it’s like, ‘Okay, I have a frame here, and I’m going to create this piece.’ It’s not like, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to fill 18 minutes.’ You have in your head that you’re doing a mural as opposed to a little tiny piece, a little thing in a small frame."

And Schneider’s ears are always open to new colors, those suggested either by her musicians or by the music she’s listening to. "Concert in the Garden" starts with the eerie, evocative use of Gary Versace’s accordion, with its suggestions of Argentine tango, her first use of that instrument. The wordless vocals of Luciana Souza also carry the melodies — Schneider’s first writing for voice. And then there are those stunning coloristic juxtapositions, as when McCaslin’s solo on "Bulería, Soleá y Rumba" winds down in its final moments over the vibrations of George Flynn’s contrabass trombone. "George goes all the way down to the low A-flat, which is one half step lower than what the piano plays. I just love that rattling sound; the vibrations are so wide that you just hear the note flapping!"

Although many jazz writers have attempted longer forms, Schneider — a regular down beat–poll winner and Grammy nominee — is one of the few to master them. But she doesn’t necessarily see the long form as her destiny, and she even wrote an arrangement for Phish’s latest album. "I would like to try miniatures. That would be hard — because I’ve been writing these big things for so long!"

ONE OF THE JOYS of the season is that short, summer-long series crop up in out-of-the-way haunts. In Marblehead, local businessman Gene Arnould’s "Marblehead Jazz" series is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Last Saturday night, he brought in the indefatigable 76-year-old singer, pianist, and songwriter Mose Allison with bassist Paul Del Nero and drummer Artie Cabral, filling the tiny Unitarian-Universalist Church to its 275-person capacity.

Allison played two one-hour sets, 37 songs total including two instrumentals and an encore. Bald, with a fringe of white hair and beard, he sang with his familiar, light baritone — lots of blues, a handful of standards, and many of his signature originals, like "Your Molecular Structure," "Ever Since the World Ended," "Ever Since I Stole the Blues," and the more recent "Certified Senior Citizen" ("I’m a certified senior citizen and I don’t have to pay full fare"). Usually when he played someone else’s song, he introduced it by the writer’s name and region — "This is by a Tennessee songwriter," he said, introducing John D. Loudermilk’s "You Call It Joggin."

Allison’s singing and songwriting look at the world with a relaxed irony, but Saturday night’s rendition of his "Everybody Cryin’ Mercy" revealed the bite beneath the smile: "Everybody cryin’ justice/Just as long as there’s business first. . . . Everybody cryin’ peace on earth/Just as soon as we win this war."

The Marblehead series continues August 14 with saxophonist Eric Alexander and pianist Harold Mabern and August 28 with Rebecca Parris, both at 8 p.m. The Unitarian-Universalist Church is at 28 Mugford Street in Marblehead; call (781) 631-1528.