Caroline Shaw | |
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 Shaw in 2020 | |
| Born | Caroline Adelaide Shaw August 1, 1982 |
| Occupations |
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| Works | List of compositions |
| Website | carolineshaw |
Caroline Adelaide Shaw (born August 1, 1982) is an American composer of contemporary classical music, violinist, and singer. [1] She is best known for the a cappella piece Partita for 8 Voices , for which she won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music. [2] Shaw received the 2022 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her Narrow Sea.
Caroline Adelaide Shaw was born on August 1, 1982, in Greenville, North Carolina, in the United States. [1] [3] At two years old she began playing the violin, being initially taught the Suzuki method by her mother Jon, a violinist and singer. [4] [5] [n 1] Early influences included the choir of her local Episcopal church and the organist there who frequently played Bach. [5] NPR's Elena Saavedra Buckley notes that Shaw's "personal place of worship was in front of her Sony boombox radio. She would call into the classical station and request a piece — a duet from The Magic Flute , say — and get ready to record it on cassette when it came on. If they aired the wrong duet, she would call back and correct them." [5] She began writing music when she was 10 years old, mostly in imitation of the chamber music of Mozart and Brahms. [4]
At university, her main focus was on violin performance, aiming to become an orchestral or chamber musician. [7] Shaw received her Bachelor of Music (violin performance) from Rice University in 2004, and her master's degree (violin) from Yale University in 2007. She entered the PhD program in composition in Princeton University in 2010. [1] [4]
At 30, Shaw became the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition Partita for 8 Voices . [8] [9] [10] [11] The jury citation praised the composition as "a highly polished and inventive a cappella work uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects." [12] The work comprises four movements inspired by baroque dance forms: Allemande, Sarabande, Courante and Passacaglia. A recording of the work was released by New Amsterdam Records on October 30, 2012, performed by the ensemble Roomful of Teeth (including Shaw). According to Steven Mackey, chair of the Department of Music at Princeton, this is the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a member of the department. (Milton Babbitt was awarded a Pulitzer citation in 1982 for his life's work as a composer.) [13]
Besides composition, Shaw is known as a musician appearing in many guises. She performs primarily as violinist with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) and as vocalist with Roomful of Teeth. She also works with the Trinity Wall Street Choir, Alarm Will Sound, Attacca Quartet, Wordless Music Orchestra, Ensemble Signal, AXIOM, The Yehudim, Victoire, Opera Cabal, the Mark Morris Dance Group Ensemble, Hotel Elefant, the Oracle Hysterical, Red Light New Music, and Robert Mealy's Yale Baroque Ensemble. [14]
Her works have been performed by Roomful of Teeth, So Percussion, ACME, the Brentano String Quartet, yMusic, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus.[ citation needed ] Shaw has been a Yale Baroque Ensemble fellow and a Rice University Goliard fellow. [15] She received the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship in 2004/5. [16]
Shaw was the musician in residence at Dumbarton Oaks during the fall of 2014, and was composer in residence with Music on Main in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada through 2016, and she has said that The Evergreen was inspired by a particular tree in Bluffs Park, Galiano Island. [17] [18]
In October 2015, rapper Kanye West released a remix of "Say You Will", the opening track from his 2008 album, 808s & Heartbreak . The remix, co-produced by Caroline Shaw, features vocals from Shaw similar to her classical compositions. [19] She also features on "Wolves" and contributed vocals to "Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 2", both from West's seventh studio album, The Life of Pablo . [20] Shaw also contributed vocals to a leaked version of "Only One" that appeared on the internet in February 2016. [21]
Shaw appeared as herself in season 4 of the Amazon Prime series Mozart in the Jungle , for a story line that involved a main character seeking to premiere her piece "Hi" in a competition for conductors. The piece was also played live at the series' release party, with Shaw conducting. [22]
In 2016, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra commissioned and premiered Shaw's The Baltimore Bomb as part of the orchestra's centennial celebration. [23] [24]
She composed the music for Josephine Decker's 2018 feature film, Madeline's Madeline . [25]
In 2018, the BBC with Coretet, The Phillips Collection, the Royal Philharmonic Society and the University of Delaware commissioned Shaw to write two works, Second Essay, Echo and Third Essay: Ruby. These received their world premiere, performed by the Calidore String Quartet, at the Cadogan Hall, London on July 16, 2018, in the BBC Proms, where they followed her 2016 work First Essay, Nimrod. According to Shaw, Nimrod was composed while listening to a recording of Marilynne Robinson's book The Givenness of Things and then in the 2016 US presidential election, which she stated accounted for the "disintegration of elements" in the piece. Shaw stated that Echo alluded to the 'echo' function in the PHP programming language, as well as to physical echoes, while Ruby is named for the Ruby programming language as well as for the gemstone. [26]
In October 2019, several performers of katajjaq, including Canadian Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq, accused Caroline Shaw and Roomful of Teeth of having engaged in cultural appropriation and exoticism for the perceived uncredited quotation of a katajjaq song in the third movement of Partita. [27] [28] [29] In a public statement released by Caroline Shaw and artistic director Brad Wells, Roomful of Teeth acknowledged that they had hired and studied with Inuit singers in 2010 and that techniques learned from those studies had been used in Partita; they further stated that they believed those "patterns to be sufficiently distinct from katajjaq". [30] [31]
In the early 2020s, Shaw joined with singer/songwriter Danni Lee to form Ringdown, "an electronic cinematic pop duo". [32] [33]
| Title | Year | Record label |
|---|---|---|
| Evergreen | 2022 | Nonesuch Records |
| The Wheel | 2022 | Alpha Classics |
| Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part | 2021 | Nonesuch Records |
| Narrow Sea | 2021 | Nonesuch Records |
| Orange | 2019 | Nonesuch Records |
| Title | Year | Peak chart positions | Album |
|---|---|---|---|
| US Hot 100 | |||
| "Pt. 2" (Kanye West featuring Desiigner and Caroline Shaw) | 2016 | 54 | The Life of Pablo |
| Title | Year | Other artist(s) | Album |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Say You Will" (Remix) | 2015 | Kanye West | Non-album song |
| "Only One" (Original Demo) | Non-album song | ||
| "FML" | 2016 | Kanye West, The Weeknd | The Life of Pablo |
| "Wolves" | Kanye West, Vic Mensa, Sia | ||
| "Freestyle 4" | Kanye West, Desiigner | ||
| "No Mistakes" | 2018 | Kanye West, Kid Cudi, Charlie Wilson | Ye |
| "Everything" | Nas, The-Dream, Kanye West, Tony Williams, 070 Shake | Nasir | |
| "Take Me to the Light" | 2019 | Francis and the Lights, Bon Iver, Kanye West, Chance the Rapper | Take Me to the Light |
Julia Wolfe is an American composer and professor of music at New York University. According to The Wall Street Journal, Wolfe's music has "long inhabited a terrain of its own, a place where classical forms are recharged by the repetitive patterns of minimalism and the driving energy of rock". Her work Anthracite Fields, an oratorio for chorus and instruments, was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Music. She has also received the Herb Alpert Award (2015) and was named a MacArthur Fellow (2016).
Hilary Hahn is an American violinist. A three-time Grammy Award winner, she has performed throughout the world as a soloist with leading orchestras and conductors, and as a recitalist. She is an avid supporter of contemporary classical music, and several composers have written works for her, including concerti by Edgar Meyer and Jennifer Higdon, partitas by Antón García Abril, two serenades for violin and orchestra by Einojuhani Rautavaara, and a violin and piano sonata by Lera Auerbach.
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"Say You Will" is a song by American rapper Kanye West, released as the opening track on his fourth studio album, 808s & Heartbreak (2008). The song contains vocals from the Kadockadee Kwire featuring Glenn Jordan, Phillip Ingram, Jim Gilstrap, Romeo Johnson, Kevin Dorsey, and Will Wheaton. It also includes background vocals from Mr Hudson and Tony Williams. The song was produced by West, who co-wrote it with Jeff Bhasker, Young Jeezy, Malik Yusef, Mr Hudson, and Consequence. In 2008, the song was recorded over a time period of 15 minutes. It is a melancholy hip hop and R&B ballad, which features synth-pop production.
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Roomful of Teeth is a vocal ensemble founded in 2009 by Brad Wells. Its stated mission is to "mine the expressive potential of the human voice".
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Partita for 8 Voices is an a cappella composition by American composer Caroline Shaw. It was composed from 2009 through 2012 for the vocal group Roomful of Teeth and was released on their Grammy Award-winning self-titled debut album on October 30, 2012. The piece was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music on April 15, 2013, making Shaw the youngest recipient of the award. The work was not premiered in full until November 4, 2013, at (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York City.
Pieces of Winter Sky is a composition for chamber ensemble by the American composer Aaron Jay Kernis. The work was commissioned by the consortium Music Accord for the ensemble eighth blackbird. The piece was a runner-up for 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music, losing to Caroline Shaw's Partita for 8 Voices.
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Kanye West has shared two new tracks on his Soundcloud: a new version of "Say You Will"... that features Pulitzer-winning musician Caroline Shaw
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