Hello.

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.)

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 works often in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist. Caroline is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several Grammy awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. This year’s projects include the score to “Fleishman is in Trouble” (FX/Hulu), vocal work with Rosalía (MOTOMAMI), the score to Josephine Decker’s “The Sky Is Everywhere” (A24/Apple), music for the National Theatre’s production of “The Crucible” (dir. Lyndsey Turner), Justin Peck’s “Partita” with NY City Ballet, a new stage work “LIFE” (Gandini Juggling/Merce Cunningham Trust), the premiere of “Microfictions Vol. 3” for NY Philharmonic and Roomful of Teeth, a live orchestral score for Wu Tsang’s silent film “Moby Dick” co-composed with Andrew Yee, two albums on Nonesuch (“Evergreen” and “The Blue Hour”), the score for Helen Simoneau’s dance work “Delicate Power”, tours of Graveyards & Gardens (co-created immersive theatrical work with Vanessa Goodman), and tours with So Percussion featuring songs from “Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part” (Nonesuch), amid occasional chamber music appearances as violist (Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, 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, and the Vail Dance Festival. She has contributed production to albums by 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, Tár, Dolly Parton’s America, and More Perfect. Her favorite color is yellow, and her favorite smell is rosemary. (CS 10/252022)

Evergreen

Released SEPTEMBER 23, 2022 (Nonesuch Records) // MORE INFO HERE

An album with the Attacca Quartet, including new string quartets and songs. 🌲 I hope that listening to this record is like walking through the forest floor from an ant’s perspective, looking up at the surrounding moss, water, and wood in all its patient, nourishing, strange complexity. 🌲

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

Video by Caroline Shaw, made at home with paper, pencil & some dirt.
Video by Robert Edridge-Waks

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 PercussionDawn 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.

🍊

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.

caroline shaw orange