Caroline Shaw

Caroline Shaw was born in Greenville, North Carolina, in 1982 and started violin as a small child, taught by her mother. She still works as a performer first: she plays violin, and she sings in Roomful of Teeth, an eight-voice group that treats the human voice as an instrument capable of far more than standard concert singing.

In 2013, at thirty, she became the youngest composer awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music, for Partita for 8 Voices, written for Roomful of Teeth. She has since won several Grammy Awards and kept unusually broad company, writing for string quartets, orchestras, and choirs while also recording with pop and hip-hop artists. Her music often starts from something plain, a spoken phrase, a dance rhythm, a single chord, and lets it bloom.

Partita for 8 Voices is the natural first listen. Follow it with Entr'acte, a string quartet that keeps slipping away from its graceful opening into stranger, quieter territory.