Nonesuch Records releases its second album from Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Caroline Shaw, Narrow Sea, on January 22, 2021. The title piece was written for Sō Percussion, Dawn Upshaw, and Gilbert Kalish in 2017; they perform it on this recording as well. Narrow Sea comprises five parts, each a new setting of a text from The Sacred Harp nineteenth century collection of shape-note hymns. A composition Shaw wrote for Sō Percussion in 2012, Taxidermy, also is on the album. A video for Part 2 of Narrow Sea can be seen below, and the album may be preordered from here.
To the Hands
19′
for voices & strings
first performed on June 24, 2016 in Philadelphia, by The Crossing & ICE
as part of the Seven Responses project, created by Donald Nally and The Crossing
Thanks to The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre for the important work that they do. Figures from their 2015 database were used for the fifth movement.
I’ve made all parts available here. Let us open our hands to those of others. (What are these wounds, in my hands, and in yours?) Walls are not the answer. We are all creatures.
The full Seven Responses recording is available on itunes or on cd or spotify.