“Caroline Shaw’s remarkable career includes winning, at age 30, the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in music for her four-part a cappella piece, Partita for 8 Voices,” writes Lou Fancher in Wednesday’s (3/9) San Francisco Classical Voice. “Often performing as a violinist with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble and as a singer with Grammy-nominated vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth, Shaw … isn’t afraid to break classical rules…. Working with hip-hop artist Kayne West on a remix of ‘Say You Will,’ the opening track of his 2008 album, 808s & Heartbreak, exposed her to a novel way of listening. … Classical music composers, performers, and audiences, she insists, must fuel and re-fuel themselves with curiosity and enthusiasm.” Says Shaw, “I’d love to see a radical change in music education and training that would not let music be a background. Have a band, know a composer, sustain an interest in classical music that relates to life.… I’d love to write something that speaks to a four-year-old, a 15-year-old, and someone who’s 95. Those are my demographics.”
Posted March 10, 2016
