Caroline Shaw: ‘Nothing breaks writer’s block like walking!’

Composer, violinist and singer Caroline Shaw is a musical jack-of-all-trades, who doesn’t limit herself to the world of modern-classical music, but just as easily collaborates with pop musicians, filmmakers and dancers. She is composer in residence at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw from 2024-25, in which period she will compose a new piece for Sō Percussion.

Caroline Shaw (Greenville, North Carolina, 1982) is one of the central members of the vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth. The Partita for 8 Voices she wrote for them won her the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for music, as the youngest winner ever. The CD recording was awarded a Grammy in 2014. No fewer than three more Grammys were to follow, in 2020, ‘21 and ‘23.

Caroline Shaw (c) Kait Moreno

Obsessed by music

For her first programme as composer in residence in October 2024, she is collaborating with the Finnish Kamus Quartet. She explains her choice: ‘I met them in 2022 at the Maidän Festival in Finland and immediately fell in love with their generosity, their profound playing and their overall curiosity about music. Since that time, we have constantly talked about working more closely together, and I am very happy that we are now embarking on a small tour of Europe, including this concert at the Concertgebouw.’

Shaw played the violin at the age of two and began composing pieces around age 10. She grew up in a world full of classical music: ‘My mother is a singer and Suzuki violin teacher, my two older brothers played violin and my father is a good amateur pianist.’

‘Greenville is a relatively small town, but there were hundreds of kids playing violin using the Suzuki method, so that was my social environment. I was quite competitive and found it inspiring to hear the older kids play songs that I was going to learn myself in a while. When I was about ten or eleven years old, I played chamber music for the first time. I was immediately sold and as a teenager I gradually fell intensely in love with music, say obsessed with it.’

Musical jobs

Initially, she wanted to be a professional violinist, preferably in a string quartet or symphony orchestra. That changed when in high school she started singing and composing more often: ‘I realized that as a musician you are going to have an uncertain career when you only concentrate on one thing. So I tried to find as many musical jobs as possible, ranging from dance accompanist, church singer, baroque violinist, contemporary musician to website designer. In 2008, for example, I learned a lot from mastering design modules like html and css. That even influenced my first compositions, including Partita.’

Shaw once said that playing the violin feels almost more natural than speaking. ‘Ah,’ she laughs, ‘that’s because I was immersed in those Suzuki violin songs from birth. As soon as I could hold something without dropping it, my mother gently introduced me to the instrument. When I speak through my violin I feel totally at ease, whereas with words I sometimes get stuck, or masked.’

Singing feels more vulnerable: ‘That is so directly linked to your personality, to your body. When I am tense, my voice trembles; when I am completely absorbed in the music, it opens up. Singing is connected to your breathing, your inner self. – There is no wood or hair between you and the air.’ And perhaps composing is even more vulnerable, she thinks: ‘It’s quite a thing to say to a listener, here, I made this for you, it came from my heart and mind.’

Often Shaw stresses that she considers it important to work together ‘as if you were in a band’. What exactly does she mean by this? ‘Well,’ she downplays, ‘that varies by situation. Every musical project is different, depending on the people involved, the genre or the event. I recently worked with Sō Percussion, where we all brought our own input on lyrics, harmony, melody, rhythm and form. When I worked with rapper Kanye West, the different creators contributed ideas, like pieces of a larger puzzle. In Ringdown, the band with my partner Danni Lee, the two of us write and produce the songs pretty equally. When I compose for an orchestra or an ensemble, I obviously provide a fairly detailed score, although even then I try to give the performers some flexibility.’

Gardening and composing

Another recurring theme is nature in all its manifestations. This is rooted in her love of gardening, she says: ‘For me, nature, whether it is the soil or small plants, is an inexhaustible source of inspiration. At the same time, she is a metaphor for music and life that continues to move and teach me. When I’m not making music, my greatest hobby is gardening. There are endless lessons to be learned from the earth, the stem of a new bean plant, the bark of a tree, how to deal with slugs and beetles, or…. you name it. Even when I’m trimming back the grape vine I think about music. Laughs, ‘I always say: gardening is cheaper than therapy!’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlf9N0Un0-Y&ab_channel=NonesuchRecords

She composes at the computer, but the process seems akin to the way a garden takes shape: ‘I take notes for weeks, months and sometimes even years, spontaneously jotting down words and ideas that come to mind. Each composition gets a separate folder, containing a text file that contains every dumb or brilliant idea about the music, concept or lyrics.

I also create a voice memo of my improvisations at a keyboard (often with a piano sound, sometimes also recorded vocals or other samples) and then start shuffling all those regions to build a form. Only then do I convert it to notation via the music program Sibelius. That still feels like improvising, because I enter the notes very smoothly (using only a keyboard with numbers and letters) so I can sketch and move the ideas around as quickly as possible.

Paper and pencil are no longer involved: ‘I strongly prefer the gigantic, dynamic sheet of paper that is the computer, much better than even the largest size music paper. After all, I can travel with it, every piece of score I have ever made is perfectly organized on my laptop. As for the actual writing process, that remains a mystery! I’m constantly listening to the pacing of the piece, seeking the thing that makes my heart and brain leap. If something doesn’t make sense and I can’t figure it out, a good walk usually helps.’

Spontaneity

She once expressed fears of losing the spontaneity of composing. How is that now? ‘‘As a teenager, I composed purely for fun. If ever I lose track of that gut instinct and deep honest motivation to make music, I’ll listen to something that moved me when I was young. Something by, say, Bach or Mozart or Schumann, or Fiona Apple, that has the power to take me back to that unconditional, true sense of love for music that I had before I had to grow up.’

‘The main key is to write from love: the honest joy of experiencing sound and music that you had as a child is never lost! I often tell young composers to cherish music because it is a magical substance that takes care of us all in an invisible way. – Like some kind of mycelium network living underground. Knowing that, I no longer fear losing the joy of making or listening to music.’

Dutch connection

She is looking forward to her stay in Amsterdam. Incidentally, the city is not new to her: ‘I was here once as a backpacker, and in my early twenties on a Watson Fellowship. I heard Ian Bostridge sing Schubert at the Concertgebouw then.’ She finds Amsterdam ‘a cool place’ and feels a connection to the Netherlands: ‘Holland has so much early art – I’ve marvelled at Rembrandt, Vermeer and Van Gogh here – but it also boasts a great modern art circuit.’

She also cherishes fond memories of Anner Bijlsma and Vera Beths: ‘I met them sometime around 2002 at the Domaine Forget music and dance academy in Canada and learned an awful lot from them, especially from Bijlsma. I can still picture him talking about the different bowing techniques in Bach, and love his recordings of the Cello Suites. There is at once freedom in them, but also deep reverence and a willingness to be extremely personal and experimental in his phrasing.’

‘During rehearsals, I often ask a player to perform a line more lilting and free, like a great cellist playing Bach or a Baroque continuo line. It’s interesting to see how many people smile when I mention his name! In my string quartet Evergreen there is even an instruction to play a certain line the way Anner Bijlsma would.’

Shaw will live in Amsterdam for several consecutive periods with her partner Danni Lee: ‘In September, we hope to put the finishing touches on Ringdown’s new album here. I will also be biking a lot and am looking forward to writing a major piece for Sō Percussion, exploring uncharted territory. To that end, I will definitely be looking for ceramic plant pots. And if for once I’m not inspired, I’ll go for a brisk walk: nothing breaks writers block like walking….’

This article was written for the October 2024 issue of Preludium, the magazine of Royal Concertgebouw and Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kByq9xJ2rZc&ab_channel=NonesuchRecords

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