Welcome to Ryan Snow's internet website. Life is Beautiful.
Ryan Snow is a civil rights attorney focused on voting rights and access to democracy. He currently serves as Counsel with the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. His work focuses on litigation and advocacy in defense of the fundamental right to vote, and to ensure that all Americans have equal and meaningful access to our political process, regardless of race, wealth, age, disability, language, carceral system impacts, or other status or circumstance.
Ryan Snow is also a trombonist, improvisor, composer, and teacher. From 2005 to 2015, Ryan worked as a professional musician based in Brooklyn, NY. His work spans all styles and genres, but has focused on avant-garde jazz and free improvised music. Ryan was also a founding member of soul-rock-funk band Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds, with whom he toured extensively from 2011 to 2014.
This internet website will feature both music and law-and-democracy-related content, and will be updated rarely.
For now, here is some music:
Ryan Snow's Trio Unleashed! featuring Aidan Carroll (bass) and Bram Kincheloe (drums)
Live at 58N6 Medialabs, Brooklyn, NY, November 22, 2009
1. untitled improvisation (Snow, Carroll, Kincheloe)
2. Platform (Snow)
3. Proof Readers (Ornette Coleman)
4. Little Room (Snow)
Note: the above tracks are currently not available; hoping to get them re-added soon.
Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds
The Weather Below (2015) Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube (free playlist), Amazon, Official Store
- This is our best studio album; multiple songs have millions of plays
- Recorded and produced by Ryan Hadlock over a three week session at Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville, WA, in December 2014, right in the middle of my career transition. I had taken the LSAT and had just finished working as a field organizer in the midterm elections, and was about to go back home to Califorina while I applied to law school. My last gig with the band as a full-time member was March 31, 2014, and the songs on this album are the same songs I had helped arrange and compose horn lines for and then toured on over the previous few years. It all came together brilliantly in the studio, and I am very thankful to have been able to contribute to the record despite having left the band as a full-time member months earlier.
Another Ride - Official Music Video, 2012
- Incredible animation and production by Jake Nelson and company
Make it Rain - Official Music Video, 2011, Live at Sullivan Hall, NYC
- Fire, featuring a solo trombone improvisation by me
- Another version live TV broadcast on Good Day New York
Dancing in the Moonlight - Live media spot, Phases of the Moon Festival, 2014
- Fun, featuring a solo whistling improvisation by me
Assorted live shows 2008-2014
- The live shows were where the musical fire really happened and where we initially cut our teeth and continually improved the music and figured out how to play together as a band. We had a lot of fun! Here are a few of the better examples that still exist online, with apologies for the variable recording sound quality:
- Quicksand (Rockwood Music Hall, NYC, 8/7/2010)
- Millie Mae (Rockwood Music Hall, NYC, 8/7/2010)
- Boom Boom (Rockwood Music Hall, NYC, 8/7/2010)
- No Rest (Rockwood Music Hall, NYC, 8/7/2010)
- Dirt (Rockwood Music Hall, NYC, 8/7/2010)
- Freight Train (Rockwood Music Hall, NYC, 8/7/2010)
- Another Ride (Rockwood Music Hall, NYC 10/23/2010)
- Lasso (Hamilton, DC, 4/9/2012)
- Cripple Creek (Mountain Jam, NY, 6/2/2012)
- Crawdaddies (Mountain Jam, NY, 6/2/2012)
- Lasso (Mountain Jam, NY, 6/2/2012)
- Another Ride (Mountain Jam, NY, 6/2/2012)
- Lasso (Knitting Factory, NYC, 7/6/2012)
- Road Trip (Knitting Factory, NYC, 7/6/2012)
- Fight (Highline Ballroom, NYC, 9/6/2012)
- [Instrumental Intro] Millie Mae (Soupstock IV, Shelton, CT, 6/8/2013)
- Mama Knows (Soupstock IV, Shelton, CT, 6/8/2013)
- No Rest (Blues, Views & BBQ, Westport, CT, 8/31/2013)
- Borderline (Irving Plaza, NYC, 11/22/2013)
- Fat Bottomed Girls (Irving Plaza, NYC, 11/22/2013)
Ryan Snow's Pull featuring Johnny Butler (tenor saxophone), Sasha Brown (guitar), Jonathan Goldberger (guitar), Chris Tordini (bass), Bram Kincheloe (drums)
The Hungry Boy (2015)
- Winner, Best Animated Short 2015, Athens Animation Festival
- Animated and Co-Directed by Jake Nelson; Written and Co-Directed by Cem Kurtulus
- Original Improvised Score by Ryan Snow and Pull
Scavenger Quartet Ryan Snow (trombone), Jake Wise (clarinet), Kenny Wang (viola), Will McEvoy (bass)
Shipwreck (excerpts) (December, 2009)
- "Inspired by the legend of Tristan and Iseult, Shipwreck is a dance-theater, shadow-puppet exploration of unrequited longing and unintended consequences. Staged at the beautiful Triskelion Arts in Brooklyn, Shipwreck features New York City’s poignantly distant skyline, as heartbreaking and unattainable as each character’s desire."
- Created and directed by Alexis Macnab, performed by amazing people
- Original score improvised by Scavenger Quartet
Ryan Snow (solo trombone)
untitled improvisation - Live at 58N6 Medialabs, Brooklyn, NY, September 2009
- Part of Josh Roseman's New York Slideworker's Union (NYSWU) collective/meeting/series, dedicated to demonstrating the principle of blowature pertaining to sliding instruments.
Ryan Snow (whistling and trombone) sitting in with Matt Musselman (trombone), Rob Adkins (bass), Kris Kaiser (guitar) - Live at Fraunces Tavern, August 2015
- Just an impromptu sit-in at a Saturday brunch gig reconnecting with my good friend Rob and trombone colleague Matt. I whistled a song and traded off with Matt on another. This kind of musical and personal familiarity and commeradeie, together with the adventure of trying something new yet old, is what I love most about playing jazz.
- Links, review, and interview by Michael Steinman, Jazz Lives blog
And here is some writing on law and democracy:
Ryan Snow, Legislative Control over Redistricting as Conflicts of Interest: Addressing the Problem of Partisan Gerrymandering Using State Conflicts of Interest Law, 165 U. Pa. L. Rev. Online 147 (2017) pdf
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