Visionary composer/bandleader Maria Schneider knows firsthand that deep listening is the key to understanding. “Every time I hear my band play, I witness the magic of listening,” she explains. “A true jazz improvisor thrives on listening.... 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.”

Schneider’s new EP American Crow is out February 3, 2026, via ArtistShare®, along with a visual narrative exploring listening, connection and courage in a divisive age.

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Kris Davis is a Grammy award-winning pianist and composer described by The New York Times as a beacon for “deciding where to hear jazz [in New York] on a given night.” Davis has released 24 recordings as a leader or co-leader and collaborated with artists such as Terri Lyne Carrington, Dave Holland, John Zorn, Craig Taborn, Ingrid Laubrock, Tyshawn Sorey and Esperanza Spalding. She was named a 2021 Doris Duke Artist alongside Wayne Shorter and Danilo Perez, Pianist of the Year by DownBeat magazine in 2022 and 2020, and Pianist and Composer of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2021. In 2019, Kris Davis’ “Diatom Ribbons” was named jazz album of the year by both the New York Times and the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll. Today Kris joins the show to share her newest music, The Solastalgia Suite.

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Niklas Lukassen’s internationally renowned quartet with saxophonist Ben van Gelder, pianist Kit Downes and drummer Francesco Ciniglio, fuses captivating individualists of the jazz scenes of Amsterdam, London, Paris and Berlin into one symbiotic musical organism.
With natural improvisational flow, this unit's interplay runs like water through sonic river forks into unexpected directions. Unafraid of intentional, suspenseful collision, it produces pounding waves of raw energy. Enriched by artistic contributions from guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, saxophonist Wanja Slavin & trombonist Geoffroy De Masure, they musically explore the unimagined depths that underlie supposedly still waters.

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