Maria Baptist & Maria Baptist Orchestra
Biography Maria Baptist & Maria Baptist Orchestra
Maria Baptist
A musical prodigy– as a pianist, composer, conductress, and professor, the ECHO-nominated Maria Baptist counts to the most compelling artists of the young German Jazz scene. Her burning passion for Jazz, which resounds in each sentence and beams in her eyes as she speaks, is most likely rooted in Maria’s personal story. The talent is passed onto her from her two grandfathers, both composers, and her piano-playing father. Born 1971 in East Berlin, the free-spirited art of improvisation begins to attract the piano student fairly early on – but since the Jazz didn’t quite harmonize with the political system of the time, it was initially a complicated affair. Listening to Keith Jarrett and Dave Brubeck records would therefore have to be kept under wraps, for the time being.
With the fall of the wall, Maria is pulled directly towards the metropolis of Jazz: New York, where among others she meets Maria Schneider, one of the most renowned composers of contemporary Big Band Jazz. Maria pursues her studies at the New School, where she concentrates on orchestral composing. For several years she is musically ardent, until 1996, when she returns to Berlin, wins countless prizes and competitions, and ultimately completes a degree in classical composition at the “Hanns Eisler” College of Music. Maria is Professor of Composition, Improvisation, and Arrangement at the school in the present.
The variety of musical projects alone, with which Maria presents herself, demonstrates her zeal for independence: the intimate piano solo, the classical Jazz trio, the mastery of piano & string quartet, unique for Jazz, and the larger orchestral work with Big Bands such as symphony orchestras. For Maria, transitioning between a variety of constellations happens smoothly and without question.
The diversity becomes her: Maria is a jazz pianist, who can play classical, and a music professor, who understands how to instigate a Jazz Trio. She masters the trance flow not only on the 88 keys, but also at the head of an orchestra. Maria is a composer, who plans her music strategically and with detail, while also a virtuoso improvisations-artist, who creates music in fleeting moments. She is a passionate narrator- assertively weaving her stories into clear melodies, without neglecting to provide an intriguing degree of complexity. Maria has a skill for existing off the beaten path in a musical sense, rather existing somewhere between Jazz and Classical.
This diversification she establishes in her critically acclaimed albums. In 2010 Maria founded her own label, whose publications demonstrate a programmatic character and a steady thematic thread. In 2012, she receives an ECHO JAZZ nomination for her album “City Grooves”.
