Maria Baptist

Maria Baptist ( born August 30, 1971 in Berlin ) is a German musician ( pianist, composer, conductor ) and university professor.

Life and work

Mary Baptist was born in 1971 in East Berlin. Her grandfather was an orchestra musician and composer, her father is a pianist. She started at age 6 playing the piano and composing at age 11. With 15 years they influenced Dave Brubeck and Keith Jarrett. She began piano studies in Berlin and won first international piano and improvisation competitions. During this period, the Berlin Wall fell; she seized the opportunity for the study to New York to draw. She founded her first piano trio in 1988 and around 1996 they had premiered her first concert program for Big Band. With the orchestral composing it came while studying in New York with Maria Schneider in contact, which promoted significantly.

1996 Baptist returns back to Berlin. She won a number of competitions, so the young Leipzig Jazz Award, the Big Band composition competitions in the HR, a grant from the NDR and the Thad Jones composers competition for large orchestra with the Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra in Copenhagen. Musicians such as Ingrid Jensen, Rolf Kühn and Gitte Haenning and ensembles such as the RIAS Big Band, the hr- Bigband and the Budapest Jazz Orchestra worked at this time with Baptist together.

Baptist finished her studies and began studying classical composition. She was a lecturer at the Berlin University and from 2001 to 2010 visiting professor at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin, where she is a professor in composition, arranging, improvisation and composition today.

Recently, Baptist worked with jazz orchestras, such as the Reykjavik Big Band, the hr- Bigband, Sunday Night Orchestra and the NDR Bigband together. In 2011, she led the first woman National Youth Jazz Orchestra with their compositions. At the same time she released her first big band album " City Groove " which was praised by critics and was nominated for the ECHO Jazz.

Discography

  • Maria Baptist Piano & String Quartet: Episodes (2013 )
  • Maria Baptist: Music for Jazz Orchestra (2013 )
  • Maria Baptist Trio: Gate 29 (2012)
  • Spring in Berlin ( 2010)
  • Music for my Trio ( 2006)
  • Crazy Dreams (2000)

Compositions

Maria Baptist composed for various ensembles (orchestra, big band, string quartet, jazz trio, solo piano) and musical genres (jazz, classical, pop ).

Maria Schneider (musician) Hessischer Rundfunk Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor hr-Bigband Arrangement Name Authority File
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