Caroline Shaw

Caroline Adelaide Shaw (born August 1, 1982) is an American composer of contemporary classical music, violinist, and singer. She is best known for the a cappella piece Partita for 8 Voices, for which she won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Shaw received the 2022 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her Narrow Sea. Early life Caroline Adelaide Shaw was born on August 1, 1982, in Greenville, North Carolina, in the United States. At two years old she began playing the violin, being initially taught the Suzuki method by her mother Jon, a violinist and singer. Early influences included the choir of her local Episcopal church and the organist there who frequently played Bach. NPR's Elena Saavedra Buckley notes that Shaw's "personal place of worship was in front of her Sony boombox radio. She would call into the classical station and request a piece — a duet from The Magic Flute, say — and get ready to record it on cassette when it came on. If they aired the wrong duet, she would call back and correct them." She began writing music when she was 10 years old, mostly in imitation of the chamber music of Mozart and Brahms. At university, her main focus was on violin performance, aiming to become an orchestral or chamber musician. Shaw received her Bachelor of Music (violin performance) from Rice University in 2004, and her master's degree (violin) from Yale University in 2007. She entered the PhD program in composition in Princeton University in 2010. Career At 30, Shaw became the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition Partita for 8 Voices. The jury citation praised the composition as "a highly polished and inventive a cappella work uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects." The work comprises four movements inspired by baroque dance forms: Allemande, Sarabande, Courante and Passacaglia. A recording of the work was released by New Amsterdam Records on October 30, 2012, performed by the ensemble Roomful of Teeth (including Shaw). According to Steven Mackey, chair of the Department of Music at Princeton, this is the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a member of the department. (Milton Babbitt was awarded a Pulitzer citation in 1982 for his life's work as a composer.)