[caption id=“attachment_1164” align=“alignright” width=“300”] Caroline Shaw[/caption]
Caroline Shaw, composer and member of the Metropolis community, is the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music recipient for her a cappella composition “Partita for 8 Voices.” She also has the distinction of being the youngest to ever receive the music Pulitzer. Her album, released on New Amsterdam Records in October 2012, features the vocal group Roomful of Teeth and was inspired by “Wall Drawing 305” by the American minimalist artist Sol LeWitt.
The award citation praised “Partita” as “a highly polished and inventive a cappella work uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects.” Since the announcement on April 15, Caroline has received high praise from the press, including feature stories in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and NPR interviews.
Caroline gave insight to her writing process: “Partita is a simple piece, born of a love of surface and structure, of the human voice, of dancing and tired ligaments, of music, and of our basic desire to draw a line from one point to another.” She told NPR, “sometimes it comes from having a sound in your head that you really want to hear, that you’ve never heard before, and struggling to make that sound happen in any way you can.”
Metropolis Ensemble commissioned Caroline in the Music for Voice concert in 2012 and is a 2012-13 participating composer in our Youth Works education program at The Teak Fellowship in New York City.
Congrats to Caroline! Listen to the album now on iTunes.