Maria Schneider’s American Crow A New EP and Visual Narrative Exploring Listening, Connection, and Courage in a Divisive Age

Available here via ArtistShare®

“Improvisation asks everyone to risk what they think they know, and offers them an opportunity – through listening – to discover something new in themselves. Jazz shines a light on what we are allowing to slip away in our brittle and fractured world, making our art form more relevant today than ever before.” – Maria Schneider

Maria Schneider’s composition, “American Crow,” (originally commissioned by Emory University) carries a message that’s becoming more relevant with each day. “American Crow is an extension of my double album, Data Lords,” explains Schneider. “It speaks to the toxicity of our present social discourse that’s devolved into an impenetrable knot of curated rage. We crow about each other incessantly, having lost almost any ability or wish to really listen and understand those with whom we disagree.”

“For decades now, every time I hear my band play, I witness the magic of listening,” she continues. “A true jazz improvisor thrives on listening: waiting, responding, considering, reconsidering, responding again, sometimes in ways that surprise even the improvisor. Jazz is at its best when everyone is vulnerable. Improvisation asks everyone to risk what they think they know, and offers them an opportunity – through listening – to discover something new in themselves. Jazz shines a light on what we are allowing to slip away in our brittle and fractured world, making our art form more relevant today than ever before.”

“American Crow” begins with distressed Americana, but soon enough submerges and dissolves into retrospection, a place and time Schneider remembers from her Midwestern childhood, when people could listen to one another. Space existed. And generally, people would look for compromise and consensus. People who saw things differently could still speak respectfully – they could like one another, even love one another. Mike Rodriguez on trumpet begins his improvisation in a fashion of listening, never talking-over, as he encounters a pastoral theme in the ensemble and rhythm section. But in time, the intensity of language ramps up, the volume increases: spewing, sparring, impenetrable statements, a society at verbal war, screaming from their echo chambers. When the vitriol morphs into just a single churning dark din that feels impossible to untangle, Jeff Miles on guitar longingly recalls the pastoral theme. Mike's responds to Jeff’s guitar over the dark din, as if to ask, "Do we want to find our way back?" or "Can we find our way back?"

After hearing “American Crow” performed in Denver, Colorado in 2024, Michelle Mercer (author of “Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter) wrote in Call and Response: “This Denver performance was the only time I’ve heard the unrecorded “American Crow.” Once was enough to hear the benefits of Maria’s uncompromising work with the same ensemble for decades: She connected the peculiarly personal to a social critique in instrumental music incisive, evocative, and lovely enough to reach everyone in the concert hall. Once was enough to hear a masterpiece offering clarion hope in the babel of a divisive age. As Wayne Shorter told Maria, Miles Davis loved music that didn’t sound like music. The Maria Schneider Orchestra doesn’t play big band jazz tunes or even orchestral music per se. Her ensemble renders the very stuff of life into music.”

Maria_Schneider photo by Katharina Poblotzki

American Crow will be released on CD as an EP that also includes a newly recorded version of “A World Lost” (reimagined as a guitar feature), a field recording of American crow vocalizations that segue into “American Crow, Revisited,” an alternate take. The visually captivating package was designed by Cheri Dorr and includes original commissioned artwork by Aaron Horkey, the renowned artist from Schneider’s hometown of Windom, MN. Horkey also painted the leaf on Schneider’s Data Lords release.
“American Crow: A Narrative in Notes and Frames” in its longform music video format was created by Four/Ten Media. It is being released worldwide and is free to all.

Schneider say: “My hope is that every aspect of this release, visual and aural, will make us all question whether we want to untangle ourselves from the knot of curated rage ravaging our society. I hope it makes one ask, ‘Can I find it in myself to listen and engage in respectful conversation to someone I disagree with? Can I be vulnerable enough to ask questions rather than preaching and yelling? Can I envision being courageous enough to taking that first step that opens the door, possibly inviting a reciprocal open ear from someone with whom I disagree? Can I embrace in my daily life the attributes that have made jazz great.’"

“American Crow” is being made, funded and documented through ArtistShare, the world’s first directto-fan funding platform that would later spark an entire industry, which Schneider first used in 2003. This is her seventh ArtistShare project. “My work has been buoyed for over 30 years by the support of many many incredible people I’ve connected with through ArtistShare. I continue to love opening my creative world to these wonderful people who have enabled me to fulfill my creative dreams.”

Maria Schneider website click here

Thank you to Ann Braithwaite for sharing with us