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The 10″ Parlophone pressing of David Bowie’s Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime) was released in the UK a year ago today. (The record was issued eleven days later by Columbia in the US as part of RSD’s Black Friday on November 28th 2014.) Bowie was backed by The Maria Schneider Orchestra (TMSO) on the recording.
Coincidentally TMSO perform a rare show in London this evening as part of their current European Tour.
Here’s a bit from her tour page…
“On this tour we will be playing a variety of music, featuring songs from our latest album “The Thompson Fields” The Maria Schneider Orchestra will be featuring Steve Wilson, Dave Pietro, Rich Perry, Donny McCaslin, Scott Robinson, Greg Gisbert, Augie Haas, Frank Greene, Mike Rodriguez, Keith O’Quinn, Ryan Keberle, Marshall Gilkes, George Flynn, Ron Oswanski, Lage Lund, Frank Kimbrough, Jay Anderson and Johnathan Blake.”
Most of those musicians who will be playing tonight, also played on Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime).
Earlier this year Maria gave an interview for Jazz Times, regarding working with David. Titled: David Bowie and Maria Schneider’s Enigmatic Collaboration, the article/interview discusses the creation of the track, from inception to completion. Here’s an excerpt…
The two worked closely together, exchanging and trying out new ideas—but freely rejecting them as well. “He was very good at saying, ‘No, I don’t like that. Yes, I love that.’ And that made it really easy, that he didn’t hem and haw around things he didn’t like,” says Schneider. The music came first; the words followed and reshaped the music around them. The opposite was also true, with Bowie’s final lyrics adapted to what he and Schneider had written. Schneider and Bowie then called in the orchestra’s rhythm section to workshop the tune—along with McCaslin and Keberle, whom Bowie had handpicked to solo. After further refinement they went into the studio in July. It took only a few takes, with the band laying down their parts before Bowie added the vocal; Schneider had imagined that he would sing in between the orchestral figures she had arranged, but his delivery instead crossed bar lines and overlapped organically with the ensemble. “It was kind of mind-blowing,” she says. “He automatically heard the unexpected.”
Read the full online version over at JazzTimes.
#BowieSue #TMSO #MariaSchneider