Maria Schneider hopes that by the time her orchestra starts playing at Dartmouth on Tuesday night, the jazz composition that the Hopkins Center co-commissioned will sound at least a little newer to the audience in Spaulding Auditorium than to her.
“We just did the first rehearsal and I’m still revising it,” the three-time Grammy winner said of the as-yet-unnamed composition, during a telephone interview from New York last Monday. “We’ll probably play our new Library of Congress piece, too. Both these commissions were due at the same time.”
They were coming due while Schneider battled a winterlong bout with the flu, which left her with an ear that was still blocked last week.
“It muffles things, but at the same time, everything is really loud,” Schneider said. “With the band yesterday, it was brutally loud.”
To make the new works, as well as samplings that span the group’s 24-year run, sound right to the audience, Schneider is relying on her ensemble of five players of reed instruments, four trumpeters, four trombonists — among them Ryan Keberle, who played with Dartmouth’s Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble in February 2015 — and a guitarist, an accordionist, a pianist, a bassist, a drummer and a sound technician.
“Along with the commissioned pieces, we’ll play from The Thompson Fields in a way that features all my different players,” Schneider said. “I think that people really come away loving the experience: Not just hearing the music, but seeing the interaction, seeing how much they enjoy playing together.”
Musicians have cycled through Schneider’s orchestra since the early 1990s, performing commissions for Jazz at Lincoln Center and other institutions, as well as touring North America and Europe. Along the way, the orchestra this year won the Grammy for best recording by a large jazz ensemble, for The Thompson Fields. Schneider also owns Grammys for her 2015 collaboration with David Bowie on the song Sue: Or in a Season of Crime, and for her Hop-commissioned classical composition Winter Morning Walks with soprano Dawn Upshaw.
“It’s just developed organically,” Schneider said of the orchestra. “One of our players says this is one of the only groups he plays in where he really feels like it’s one voice. It takes years to develop that. It’s like anything really meaningful in life. You don’t really achieve it. It just evolves. It’s a day-to-day thing. One day it’s ‘Omigod! Look at what we have!’ You can’t plan that or will that into being.”
For Schneider, the willpower comes into play during the interim between recordings and tours.
“You get so far away from the process of writing music,” Schneider said. “You have to relearn how to become an introvert.
“I always think of it like farmland: You have to let it go fallow for a while.”
The Maria Schneider Orchestra performs in Dartmouth College’s Spaulding Auditorium in Hanover on Tuesday night at 7. For tickets ($17 to $50) and more information, call 603-646-2242 or visit hop.dartmouth.edu. On Monday afternoon at 4:30, Schneider will join a panel discussion on “Digital Rights and the Artist” at the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network’s innovation center at 4 Currier Place in Hanover.
Singer-songwriter Bill Staines plays from his deep, broad repertoire of his own compositions and traditional works at the Sunapee Community Coffeehouse on Friday night at 7. Admission is by donation of $15.
Vermont Poet Laureate Chard deNiord reads from his work, including his new collection Interstate, on Saturday afternoon at 2 at Woodstock’s Norman Williams Public Library. Admission is free.
As a benefit for the Topsham-Corinth Little League, the Americana bands Turnip Truck and Buzz Kill Abby perform at the final Corinth Coffeehouse of the season at Town Hall on Cookeville Road on Saturday night at 7. Admission is by donation of $5 to $10. For more information visit corinthvt.org.
The Burlington-based indie band Barika plays a danceable mix of funk and psychedelic music with a taste of west Africa at Tunbridge Town Hall on Saturday night at 7:30, in the last MountainFolk concert of the season. Tickets cost $15 in advance and $20 at the door. To reserve seats and learn more, visit mtfolk.org.
Violinist Airi Yoshioka, a founding member of the Damocles Trio and the Modigliani Quartet, performs Strafford composer Stuart Saunders Smith’s The Rivers of Maine at three solo recitals over the weekend to benefit Upper Valley institutions. At 7:30 Saturday night at the Upper Valley Music Center in Lebanon, Yoshioka plays the Smith composition and other works on behalf of the center’s education programs; the suggested donation is $20.
Yoshioka hits the stage next at 3 on Sunday afternoon at the United Church on the Strafford Green for a concert on behalf of Strafford’s Morrill Memorial and Harris Library. The suggested donation for admission is $10. And at 7:30 on Sunday night, Yoshioka performs at the ArtisTree Community Center for the Arts in South Pomfret, with proceeds from donations going to the center’s scholarship fund. For more information, visit uvmusic.org or artistreevt.org.
Boston-based standup standouts Sam Ike, Tricia Auld and Maylin Pavletic will perform at the Woolen Mill Comedy Club in Bridgewater on April 22 at 8 p.m. The club moved in 2015 from the first floor to the second floor of the Bridgewater Mill complex in downtown Bridgewater. Admission is by a suggested donation of $5; attendees should bring their own drinks. For more information, visit the Woolen Mill Comedy Club’s Facebook page.
For its annual spring concert in Norwich on April 24, the Camerata New England piano quartet will perform at a new venue: the home of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Upper Valley, across Route 5 from The Family Place. Cellist Linda Galvan, violist Peter Sulski, pianist Evelyn Zuckerman and violinist Omar Chen Guey will perform works of Beethoven, Faure and Schubert, starting at 3 p.m. Concert-goers should park at The Family Place, or on Palmer Court. For tickets ($28) and more information, visit cameratanewengland.org or call 802-785-4833 or email info@cameratanewengland.org.
Today is the deadline for singers, dancers and actors ages 7 and older to sign up for the auditions that North Country Community Theatre will hold at the Dance Collective in West Lebanon on Saturday and Sunday for its July production of The Secret Garden. To schedule an audition, email ncctetc@gmail.com. To learn more, visit ncct.org/home/the-secret-garden.
The Celtic ensemble Atlantic Steps performs Irish step dances at Plymouth State University’s Hanaway Theatre on Friday night at 7. For tickets ($25 to $40) and more information, visit plymouth.edu/silver-center or call 603-535-2787.
The BarnArts Center for the Arts and the Rochester, Vt.-based Bald Mountain Theater troupe presents a new musical adaptation of the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel at Barnard Town Hall on Saturday, with shows at for 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. For tickets ($8 to $12) and more information, visit barnarts.org or call 802-234-1645 or email info@barnarts.org.
Bald Mountain also stages the play tonight and Friday night at 7 at Rochester High School, on April 29 at 7 p.m. at Freight House Hall in White River Junction, and on April 30 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. in Tunbridge Town Hall. Additional information is available at baldmountaintheater.org.
The Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph and the Chelsea Funnery are inviting aspiring actors ages 7 and older to three intensive workshops on Shakespeare’s plays next week. For ages 7 to 11, the workshops on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream will run mornings from 9 to noon. For ages 12 to 18, a master class on scenes from Shakespeare’s work will take place afternoons between 1 and 4. The workshop on long-form improvisation for ages 14 through adulthood, is scheduled for 4:15 to 6:15 each afternoon. Tuition for each workshop is $50, with scholarships available. To register and learn more, visit chandler-arts.org or call 802-431-0204 or email emily@chandler-arts.org.
John Gorka, the folk veteran who admits in one of his signature songs to being from New Jersey, plays at the Flying Goose Brew Pub and Grille in New London tonight at 8. Reservations are required. For tickets ($25) and more information, visit flyinggoose.com or call 603-526-6899.
Erin Harpe and the Delta Swingers play and sing the blues at the New Socials Bar and Grill in Claremont on Friday night at 7. Admission is free. For more information, call 603-287-4416 or visit newsocialsbarandgrill.com.
To benefit Mascoma Valley Regional High School Project Graduation, Mo’Combo and the Little Town Horns will perform a “Rock Island Blues Review” on Friday night at 7 at the Mountain Meadow Golf Lounge and Event Center in West Canaan. For tickets ($10) and more information, visit mountainmeadowgolfclub.com or call 603-769-4093.
Tucker Berry of East Randolph performs with the horn section while Zeda Wolf, of Plainfield, and Kaylee Starke-Meredith, of Sharon, play the violin during the Saturday afternoon concert with which the Green Mountain Youth Symphony (GMYS) celebrates its 15th anniversary at the Barre Opera House. The Upper Valley musicians all perform with the GMYS’ senior orchestra. The concert starts at 3:30 p.m. Tickets at the door are $5 to $15. For more information, visit gmys-vt.org.
The Connecticut Valley Railroad Club stages its fifth Dartmouth/Lake Sunapee Model Railroad Show at Kearsarge Regional Middle School in North Sutton, N.H., on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Admission is $5 for ages 13 and older. For more information, visit cvrr.railfan.net/cvmrr.
In the next installment of the Vermont Humanities Council’s Vermont Reads series on the Ernest Shackleton expedition to the Antarctic, author Jennifer Armstrong visits the Wilder Club and Library on Monday afternoon at 4, to read from her Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World. Admission is free. For more information, visit quecheeandwilderlibraries.com.
Master dancer Gina Sonne teaches the first of three sessions on waltzes, the Lindy hop, blues and other forms of fancy footwork on Friday night at 7 at the Vermont Independent School for the Arts in Sharon. The sessions on Friday and on May 13 and 20 each cost $7 per dancer. For more information, email waltzlover@gmail.com or call 802-299-9716.
The Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph holds a Spring Jam dance in its Esther Mesh Room on Friday night from 8 to 11. Admission is free with a Vermont Technical College ID and $5 for others.
The Americana quartet Traveling Broke and Out of Gas pulls into Windsor Station tonight from 7 to 10 . Next up over the coming week are hip-hopper Jay Kila on Friday night at 10 and Brickdrop with a set of danceable funk and rock on Saturday night at 9.
Singer-guitarist Johnnie James performs an acoustic set at Jesse’s restaurant in Hanover on Friday night starting at 5.
Bassist Peter Concilio and guitarist Billy Rosen join forces for a set of jazz at the SILO Distillery in Windsor on Friday night from 5:30 to 7:30.
Pianist Randall Mullen plays at the Canoe Club in Hanover Friday night at 6:30. Following him to the microphone with 6:30 to 9:30 shows over the coming week are folk singer-songwriter Cormac McCarthy on Saturday, acoustic chameleon Joseph Stallsmith on Sunday, guitarist Tom Pirozzoli on Tuesday, pianist Keith Bush on Wednesday and the duo of singer Lydia Gray and guitarist Ed Eastridge next Thursday. And on Monday night starting at 5:30, Marko the Magician performs tableside sleight-of-hand.
This Friday night’s line-ups at the Salt hill Pubs, all starting at 8, feature Wherehouse with a set of rock in Lebanon, Alex Smith and the Mountain Sound in Hanover and Kyle Boisvert in Newport.
Frydaddy sets the rockin’ rhythm for dancing on Friday night at Skunk Hollow Tavern in Hartland Four Corners.
Ramunto’s Brick & Brew Pizza in Bridgewater hosts an open mic starting at 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays. Participants get a free large cheese pizza.
String players of all ages and abilities are welcome at the weekly acoustic jam session at South Royalton’s BALE Commons on Friday night from 6:30 to 10.
Al Carruth and E.J. Tretter host the Sunapee Community Coffeehouse’s monthly open-mic on Friday night at 7, in the basement of the Sunapee Methodist Church. Singers, storytellers and other performers should sign up before showtime with the hosts.
Joe Stallsmith leads a weekly hootenanny of Americana, folk and bluegrass at Salt hill Pub in Hanover on Monday nights at 6.
Bradford’s Colatina Exit holds an open mic on Tuesdays at 8 p.m.
The Seven Barrel Brewery in West Lebanon runs an open mic on Tuesday nights, beginning at 8.
Jim Yeager hosts an open mic at Hartland’s Skunk Hollow Tavern, at 8:30 on Wednesday nights.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.