The Crow Patrol is very honored to share that several of our winter crow roost video clips have been incorporated into American Crow: A Narrative in Notes and Frames, a powerful new release by renowned composer and bandleader Maria Schneider!

Link: https://youtu.be/LLkCeVL7oTo?si=SpnaDQwoBlOK41kc

Maria reached out to us last year at the kind suggestion of Kevin McGowan of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. She was searching for footage of large communal crow roosts, capturing the extraordinary density, motion, and mystery of thousands of American Crows gathering at night. Her project explores the art of listening through jazz improvisation, using the American Crow as both symbol and subject: a reflection on social noise, fractured discourse, and the possibility of finding our way back to attentive listening.

To see footage from the Lawrence winter crow roost woven into Maria’s sweeping orchestration is deeply meaningful. The crows’ swirling arrivals, their massing on snow-covered ice, and their settling into shoreline trees now live inside a musical narrative that moves from tension and discord toward memory, reflection, and the fragile hope of reconciliation.

Maria’s work has long demanded and rewarded close listening. Her earlier double album Data Lords earned multiple Grammys and even Pulitzer recognition. In American Crow, she blends the turbulence of our modern world with pastoral remembrance, allowing solo voices to search for clarity amid chaos. The crows’ presence in this project feels fitting: social, intelligent, expressive beings whose communal gatherings are both noisy and profoundly ordered.

When Maria first connected with us, she spoke warmly of growing up with two crows in her family. Her sincerity and artistic vision were evident from the start. It has been a joy to assist her and filmmaker Evan Chapman in bringing authentic crow flight action video footage into this beautiful collaboration of music and natural world.

To contribute even a small visual thread to such an ambitious and heartfelt work is something we will certainly treasure!

The winter crow roost continues to surprise, teach, and inspire and now, in a new way, it sings!!