A subtler approach sees two ceramic bowls of water used as instruments, with Upshaw taking a cup and pouring water from one bowl to another, changing their pitch. At one point in Narrow Sea, the pianist and all four percussionists set about the piano strings as if strumming an enormous dulcimer. Crumb and Shaw are very different composers but, as well as sharing an affinity for the string quartet, both find joy in unexpected sounds. Narrow Sea was written as a companion piece to The Winds of Destiny by George Crumb, whose enduringly avant-garde electric string quartet work Black Angels provided Shaw with her first experience of contemporary classical music as a teenager – a baptism by fire. ‘I’m trying to make sure I don’t get swallowed up into only one community,’ composer Caroline Shaw Photograph: Dayna Szyndrowski A year ago, Orange, a recording of her string quartets, won the Attacca Quartet a Grammy. She has written film scores, sung on others, was the soloist in her own violin concerto, and even managed a cameo appearance as herself in Amazon Studio’s comedy drama Mozart in the Jungle. “Composer, for some people, can mean something very particular,” she says, “and I’m trying to make sure I don’t get swallowed up into only one community.” Not that Shaw’s range shows any sign of narrowing: even a small sample of her work over the past few years throws up an array of names not often seen together: rappers Kanye West and Nas, soprano Renée Fleming, mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry, pianist Jonathan Biss. It was written for Shaw’s own group, Roomful of Teeth.Įight years on, she’s still wary of defining herself too narrowly.
Partita, her winning score, is a joyful rollercoaster of a work, encompassing song, speech and virtually every vocal technique you can imagine. W hen Caroline Shaw became, at the age of 30, the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer prize for music, she described herself as “a musician who wrote music” rather than as “a composer”.
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