Caroline Shaw
Caroline Shaw is a violinist, singer and composer. In 2013 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Partita for 8 Voices, written for the vocal octet Roomful of Teeth, with whom she sings. She’s written for artists including soprano Renée Fleming and has produced for Kanye West. Her new album of string quartets, Orange, is out now.
I fell in love with playing in a string quartet when I was young. Maybe nine, ten, eleven? It’s been a total joy throughout my life. I started by writing a quartet for some friends I was playing with, and then I wrote another one and it kept going from there. I love so much of the quartet repertoire, but I wanted to cook up something of my own.
People talk about the weight of tradition and the heaviness of the past. I felt I could actually toss it all up in the air, like a balloon, and really enjoy it. What if we could just take some of these older pieces and composers that we love and ask, ‘What is it that I personally love so much about this?’ Each of my quartets started by thinking about something that I loved about an older piece.
It’s been six years since my piece Partita for 8 Voices won the Pulitzer Prize. I can look back with a little more perspective. At the time, a lot of people didn’t know I wrote music – maybe they thought of me as a singer – and suddenly there was a
lot of attention. I still like Partita for 8 Voices. I perform it many times a year with Roomful of Teeth, and it makes me really happy to see others in the group finding new things in it. It keeps the piece really fresh and new.
I don’t have any composing routines. None at all. I couldn’t even tell a small lie about that. I travel a lot and I’m o en in di erent places, with a schedule that’s di erent day to day. I get to write music in my o time. I kind of like that space where I tuck my music-writing in and around other performing activities. I feel very lucky to work that way as a composer. I always tell younger composers that music is all around you if you just look for it. One of my dreams is to work with the rapper Chika. We’ve been in touch. I really love what she’s doing right now, and I would love to make music with her in some way. I also have this idea of a large, enveloping, gorgeous piece of theatre music, but I don’t know what that it is yet. I feel like in ten years I’ll be able to do that.