Maria Baptist
Maria Baptist (* the 30th August 1971 in Berlin ) is a German musician of the modern jazz (pianist, composer, conductor) and professor.
Live and act
Baptist was born in East Berlin in 1971. Her grandfather was an orchestral musician and composer, her father is a pianist. She started playing the piano at the age of 6 and composed at the age of 11. At 15, they influenced Dave Brubeck and Keith Jarrett . In 1988 she founded her first piano trio. She began studying piano at the Hanns Eisler University of Music in Berlin with Wolfram Heicking and won the first international piano and improvisation competitions. She took the opportunity to move to New York to study in 1993 and to study at the New School until 1995 . Around 1996 she performed her first big band concert program . During her studies in New York she came into contact with orchestral composing with Maria Schneider , who supported her significantly.
In 1996 Baptist returned to Berlin. She has won a number of competitions, such as the Leipzig Junior Jazz Prize, the Big Band Composition Competition at Hessischer Rundfunk , the North German Broadcasting Prize and the Thad Jones composers' competition for large orchestra with the Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra in Copenhagen. Musicians like Ingrid Jensen , Rolf Kühn and Gitte Haenning as well as ensembles like the RIAS Big Band , the hr-Bigband and the Budapest Jazz Orchestra worked with Baptist during this time.
After studying the piano, she began studying classical composition. She was a lecturer at the Berlin Academy of Music, and from 2001 to 2010 visiting professor at the Academy of Music "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin , where she was since 2000 a professor in the subjects of composition , arrangement , improvisation and music theory taught.
Baptist's artistic work is extremely varied: “Somewhere between jazz and classical music, her style is entirely based on her personality.” (Südwest Presse)
In 2014 Baptist released her piano solo album "Self-Portrait", recorded in New York. The subsequent tour took her to 25 cities in 3 European countries. The recording "Self-Portrait" was highly acclaimed by the critics; “I just fell in love with this self-portrait. Into a stream of love and sadness, longing and fragility that springs from her pieces ”(aboutjazz). Baptist inspires the audience with her “energetic game” (Piano News), her “outstanding technique and her rich sound spectrum” (Kieler Nachrichten).
Baptist also works intensively with her jazz trio. The "extremely independent piano language of their trio" (AAZ) is documented on five critically acclaimed recordings: Crazy Dreams (2000), Music for My Trio (2005), Spring in Berlin (2010), Gate 29 (2012) and " Poems without Words "(2017).
On the other hand there are several collaborations related to classical music, such as Baptist's recording of Schönberg's “Pierrot Lunaire” with jazz improvisations in the spirit of its creator. Particularly noteworthy is Baptist's album “Episodes” (2013) for piano and string quartet, with which Baptist “successfully bridges the gap between the vocabulary of jazz and that of chamber music” (rbb).
In 2011 she directed the Federal Youth Jazz Orchestra . As a result, she released her first big band album "City Grooves", which received critical acclaim and was nominated for ECHO Jazz . In 2014 Baptist founded her Maria Baptist Orchestra, which for All About Jazz is “in a league with the initiators of modern big band jazz such as Schneider, Gruntz, McNeely or Bley”.
Maria Baptist currently commutes between Berlin and her adopted home New York. At the same time, Baptist cooperates as a conductor and composer with renowned orchestras such as the Reykjavik Bigband, the hr-Bigband, the Sunday Night Orchestra , Budapest Jazz Orchestra and the NDR Bigband .
Compositions
Baptist composes for different ensembles (orchestra, big band, string quartet, jazz trio, solo piano) and musical genres (jazz, classical, pop).
Discographic notes
- Maria Baptist Piano Solo:
- Resonance (2018)
- Self-Portrait (2014)
- Sometimes Alone (2005)
- Maria Baptist Trio:
- Poems without Words (2017)
- Gate 29 (2012)
- Spring in Berlin (2010)
- Music for my Trio (2006)
- Crazy Dreams (2000)
- Maria Baptist Piano & String Quartet: Episodes (2013)
- Maria Baptist Orchestra: Here & Now (2016), Here & Now II (2019)
- Maria Baptist & Bundesjazzorchester: City Grooves (2011; new edition 2013 as Music for Jazz Orchestra together with a live recording from the Jazzfest Berlin 2011)
- Telmo Pires / Maria Baptist: Sinal (2009)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Südwest Presse, A Tribute to New York, February 16, 2015
- ^ Piano News, The tour dates for Maria Baptist solo, September 11, 2014
- ↑ http://www.aboutjazz.de/2014/09/maria-baptist-self-portrait/ , accessed on September 22, 2014
- ^ Piano News, A Self-Portrait: Maria Baptists Tour and CD, September 11, 2014
- ↑ Kieler Nachrichten, Orchestrale Klangfarben, September 18, 2014
- ↑ Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, very pleasing, September 24, 2012
- ↑ Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg, Ulf Drechsel Commentary CD Booklet
- ↑ http://www.allaboutjazz.com/maria-baptist-music-for-jazz-orchestra-by-jack-bowers.php
- ↑ biography (jazz-fun.de)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Baptist, Mary |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German musician and professor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 30, 1971 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |