Caroline Shaw is Making Classical Cool

Her innovative work won her a Pulitzer Prize at age 30. She’s collaborated with Kanye and Nas. What does her success mean for the long-suffering genre?

- By Jonathan Gharraie

A few months before the coronavirus pandemic made even the smallest gatherings seem quaint, the composer Caroline Shaw asked her audience at the Kings Place concert hall, in London, to hum in B-flat while she sang from the stage, accompanied by the strings of Attacca Quartet. This was not a typical classical concert. For much of it, Shaw sat atop a barstool, either singing or introducing her works to the audience. After the intermission, she joined the quartet as second viola for a more conventional performance of a well-loved classic, Mendelssohn’s String Quintet No. 2.

The audience skewed younger than one might expect. Shaw, who lives in New York City, is often cited as proof that classical music has an exciting future. In 2013, at the age of 30, she became the youngest composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for music, for Partita for 8 Voices. The citation for the winning composition described it as “a highly polished and inventive a cappella work” including “speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects.” Since then, Shaw’s music has been performed at the Hollywood Bowl and Lincoln Center, and used for a Beyoncé tour video. She has collaborated with hiphop giants such as Kanye West and Nas, and received a 2020 Grammy nomination for Orange, an album of her music recorded by Attacca Quartet. She released her latest album, Narrow Sea, in January.