I’m Caroline. Welcome to my little garden plot on the internet. (Over on Instagram is where you’ll find soft-boiled eggs and other stuff.)
Recently in the news:
March 2021 – profile in The Atlantic
February 2021 – profile in The Guardian
February 2021 – review of Narrow Sea on PopMatters
January 2021 – review of Narrow Sea on Pitchfork
January 2021 – profile of Graveyards & Gardens in Vancouver’s Georgia Straight
January 2021 – profile of Graveyards & Gardens in Vancouver’s Stir
About:
Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She is the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music for Partita for 8 Voices (Roomful of Teeth), and she works often in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist. 2022 will see the release of work with Rosalía (on upcoming album MOTOMAMI), the score to Josephine Decker’s film The Sky Is Everywhere (A24/Apple), the premiere of Justin Peck’s Partita with NY City Ballet, the premiere of the new stage work LIFE with Gandini Juggling and the Merce Cunningham Trust, a premiere for NY Philharmonic and Roomful of Teeth, the premiere Wu Tsang’s silent film Moby Dick with live score for Zurich Chamber Orchestra co-composed with Andrew Yee, a second album with Attacca Quartet called The Evergreen (Nonesuch), the premiere of Helen Simoneau’s Delicate Power, tours of Graveyards & Gardens (immersive dance theater work co-created with Vanessa Goodman), and tours with So Percussion featuring songs from Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part (Nonesuch), amid occasional chamber music appearances (Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, Caramoor Festival, La Jolla Music Society). Caroline has written over 100 works in the last decade, for Anne Sofie von Otter, Davóne Tines, Yo Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, LA Phil, Philharmonia Baroque, Seattle Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Aizuri Quartet, The Crossing, Dover Quartet, Calidore Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, Miro Quartet, I Giardini, Ars Nova Copenhagen, Ariadne Greif, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Britt Festival, Vail Dance Festival, and many others. She has produced for Kanye West, Rosalía, Woodkid, and Nas. Her work as vocalist or composer has appeared in several films, tv series, and podcasts including The Humans, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, Beyonce’s Homecoming, jeen-yuhs: a Kanye Trilogy, Dolly Parton’s America, and More Perfect. (CS 2022)
Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part
Released JUNE 25, 2021 (Nonesuch Records)
A 10-song album made in deep collaboration with Sō Percussion and engineer producer Jon Low. More info here.
We Need to Talk
World Premiere (April 16, 2021)
Music by Caroline Shaw
Words by Anne Carson
Starring soprano Ariadne Greif
Directed by Maureen Towey
Filmed and edited by Four/Ten Media
Creative Producer: Sarah Williams, for Opera Philadelphia
Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw brings her complex, layered sound world to the Opera Philadelphia Channel with We Need to Talk, based on a poem by celebrated poet Anne Carson. Soprano Ariadne Greif stars as a young woman in conversation with herself, reminiscent of our isolated days of quarantine: days of frustration, joy, and grief. This conversation occurs between Greif—praised for her ”luminous, expressive voice” (New York Times)—and a choral track featuring Shaw’s own voice and a recitation of the poem by Carson herself.
The new film, by award-winning director Maureen Towey and Philadelphia-based Four/Ten Media, creates an environment filled with tension and energy, amplified by Shaw’s inclusion of electronic composition and sampling of old film scores. We Need to Talk challenges conventional notions about the definition of opera— while rooted in the hallmark of the operatic form: strong musical storytelling—making it an ideal fourth and final installment of the Digital Commissions Series.
Three Ways to Watch: Available on-demand starting April 16, with a Season Pass or Digital Commissions Bundle until May 31, 2021, or with a seven-day rental.
Graveyards & Gardens (January 2021 // Music on Main + EMPAC)
a new work co-created by Vanessa Goodman (Action at a Distance) and Caroline Shaw
more info here
Narrow Sea (Nonesuch 2021)
/// Featuring Sō Percussion, soprano Dawn Upshaw, and pianist Gil Kalish
Nonesuch Records released its second album from 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.
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Orange (Nonesuch 2019)
Grammy Award Winner: Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance
New Amsterdam and Nonesuch Records released Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Caroline Shaw’s Orange, performed by Attacca Quartet, on April 19, 2019. The two-LP vinyl edition includes the album on double 180-gram orange vinyl, pressed at Record Industry in the Netherlands, along with a printed excerpt from the score, was released in late summer 2020. Orange, which features six of Shaw’s pieces for string quartet, is the first full-length album to exclusively feature works by Shaw. It is also the first release in a new partnership between the two record labels, established with the goal of enabling contemporary American composers to realize creative ambitions that might not otherwise be achievable.
