"murder of crows" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It is used as a collective noun to refer to a group of crows, and is often used to evoke a dark or ominous mood. For example: "A murder of crows circled overhead, cawing loudly as the storm approached."
So there was no murder, and there was no murder of crows.
Cardiff and Miller's "Murder of Crows" at the Berlin National Gallery, 2009.
"The Murder of Crows" will certainly impress listeners who have never experienced one of Ms. Cardiff and Mr. Miller's works.
Spooky and spectacular as it is, "The Murder of Crows" does not quite cohere into an original Gesamtkunstwerk.
But one day while Prue is minding 1-year-old Mac, a murder of crows swoops down and kidnaps him into the Impassable Wilderness.
Its latest offering, opening Friday, is "The Murder of Crows," an elaborate sound installation by the Canadians JANET CARDIFF and GEORGE BURES MILLER.
That leg is the most potent of many grotesque images in "The Murder of Crows," perhaps because the installation as a whole evokes what the curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev calls "phantom-limb syndrome".
"The Murder of Crows" has been beautifully realized in the armory's enormous darkened Drill Hall, which has been used effectively for other sound-heavy installations (Ryoji Ikeda's "Transfinite," from the spring of 2011, being a prime example).
That's even more true of a later installation, "The Murder of Crows," which had its premiere at the 2008 Biennale of Sydney in Australia and is now at the Park Avenue Armory as part of the Mostly Mozart Festival.
" 'Murder of Crows' is a dark piece," Cardiff added, "but it also comes out of the soundscape of that strange, smoggy city — totally different sounds from those we were used to".
