Caroline Shaw
Caroline Shaw
Caroline Adelaide Shawis a New York City-based violinist, singer, and composer. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 for her a cappella piece Partita for 8 Voices...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
CountryUnited States of America
according baroque century composer figuring half inside music notes performance
I've done a lot of performance practice, Baroque playing, and some of the joy and the challenge of it is figuring out what the composer intended... You have music of the 17th century - it's all whole notes and half notes. But inside of that, there are so many things that one can do, at least according to what we know about performance practice.
bach ballet jobs music playing spent time
I've spent a lot of time playing Bach partitas. One of my first jobs was to play for ballet and modern classes, so the music in 'Partita' is kind of like choreography for me.
add colors curious extreme instead next sounds
I was curious about experimenting with different colors - kind of like having an expanded orchestra. Suddenly, instead of just writing for strings, you can add bassoon and oboe and brass. I like these extreme differences in sounds right next to each other.
digging favorite future gearing love music
I've been gearing up for this future of writing a lot of new music by digging into my favorite old stuff, and twisting it around and highlighting the things I really love.
experiment sort
It was sort of an experiment to try to leave the violin. Can I be a real person without this thing? It was a big part of my identity.
played
I played a lot of Bach's partitas and sonatas; I like the way that Bach was abstracting already from these dance forms.