Caroline Shaw, Musician, Composer
It's International Women's Day, and I'm not quite sure how to celebrate so I'll share a post about one of my favorite contemporary female composers, Caroline Shaw.
Shaw is more than a composer, but that seems to be the first thing she's known for as the youngest winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
She's also an accomplished violinist and has a great singing voice.
And she's a television star. OK, maybe not a star, but played herself in an episode of the Amazon Prime series Mozart in the Jungle.
Most of my music friends know and appreciate Shaw's work, but the nonmusic ones are slow on the uptake.
So if you fall into that category, I suggest three clicks below to get to know her better.
Some Shaw fans might recommend starting with "Partita for 8 Voices" for which she won her Pulitzer. It's good, but I like "Entre'acte" much better so am recommending it first. The pizzicato passages, a few minutes in, seem to fall apart and come back together in such unpredictable and interesting ways. The version performed by Attacca Quartet is a good one to start with.
The other two links provide a comprehensive view of her work, as well as what she's up to now.
Going back to the top, I think one way to celebrate IWD can include noticing and appreciating the achievements of great women composers. For this generation, that surely includes Caroline Shaw. But there's no need to stop there because history has produced others - Meredith Monk, Nadia Boulanger, Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelson.
After curating interest in them, the next thing to do is to listen-to and start performing their work more.
In the future, my hope is that we can forget they are "women composers" and they can just be "composers" but for the moment, I think we need to pay attention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQPY89YQmJQ
