Caroline Shaw

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Shaw Caroline
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Biography (Excerpt)

The original score for Ken Burns’s two-part documentary LEONARDO da VINCI, with new compositions by Caroline Shaw, features performances by the composer’s longtime collaborators Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth as well as John Patitucci. Shaw wrote and recorded new music for LEONARDO da VINCI, marking the first time a Ken Burns film has featured an entirely original score. The film is directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, who says: “Caroline’s existing body of music—joyful, daring, at times transcendent, and wholly unique—seemed to speak directly to Leonardo, a seeking soul who, 500 years after his death, can come across as strikingly modern ... The music Caroline created is dynamic, enthralling and filled with wonder."

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8
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Facebook URL
https://www.facebook.com/carolineadelaideshaw
Twitter URL
https://twitter.com/caroshawmusic
Instagram URL
https://www.instagram.com/carolineadelaideshaw/

The original score for Ken Burns’s new two-part documentary, LEONARDO da VINCI, with new compositions by Caroline Shaw, is available via Nonesuch Records on October 25, 2024; the documentary airs on November 18 and 19 at 8pm ET (check local listings) on PBS, PBS.org, and the PBS App. The album features performances by the composer’s longtime collaborators Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth as well as John Patitucci. Shaw wrote and recorded new music for LEONARDO da VINCI, marking the first time a Ken Burns film has featured an entirely original score. 


LEONARDO da VINCI is directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon. The film, which explores the life and work of the fifteenth century polymath LEONARDO da VINCI, is Burns’s first non-American subject. It also marks a significant change in the team’s filmmaking style, which includes using split screens with images, video, and sound from different periods to further contextualize Leonardo’s art and scientific explorations. LEONARDO da VINCI looks at how the artist influenced and inspired future generations, and it finds in his soaring imagination and profound intellect the foundation for a conversation we are still having today: what is our relationship with nature and what does it mean to be human?

“No single person can speak to our collective effort to understand the world and ourselves,” said Ken Burns. “But Leonardo had a unique genius for inquiry, aided by his extraordinary skills as an artist and scientist, that helps us better understand the natural world that we are part of and to appreciate more fully what it means to be alive and human.”

“To help give depth and dimension to Leonardo’s inner life, and to carry our viewers on his personal journey, we enlisted the composer Caroline Shaw,” McMahon says in the album’s liner note. “Caroline’s existing body of music—joyful, daring, at times transcendent, and wholly unique—seemed to speak directly to Leonardo, a seeking soul who, 500 years after his death, can come across as strikingly modern. A fully original score, we believed, would add crucial connective tissue to areas where the record of Leonardo’s life is thin and it’s possible to briefly lose his trail. The music Caroline created is dynamic, enthralling and filled with wonder.

“This soundtrack is a testament to the inspired efforts of Jennifer Dunnington, who marshaled it into being, the brilliant musicians and vocalists who, with the help of Alex Venguer, Neal Shaw, Colton Dodd and Tim Marchiafava, made it soar, and most of all Caroline Shaw, who might be Leonardo’s soulmate from across time,” he continues. “With her help, the Leonardo who emerges is no wizard shrouded in mystery, but a prideful, obsessive, at times lonely or flustered, occasionally ecstatic, and, in the end, content man who is in ways both modern and thoroughly of his time.”

“As we set out to explore Leonardo’s life, we realized that while he was very much a man of his time, he was also interested in something more universal,” said Sarah Burns. “Leonardo was uniquely focused on finding connections throughout nature, something that strikes us as very modern today, but which of course has a long history.”

Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several Grammy awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She has worked with a range of artists including Rosalía, Renée Fleming, and Yo-Yo Ma, and she has contributed music to films and TV series including Fleishman Is in Trouble, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, and Beyoncé’s Homecoming. In addition to three albums with Sō Percussion, Narrow Sea, Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part, and Rectangles and Circumstance, Nonesuch has released her two Grammy-winning albums Orange and Evergreen, both of which feature Attacca Quartet. “Two-Step” and “Ghost,” Shaw’s songs with Ringdown, her duo with Danni Lee Parpan, are available now on Nonesuch. Caroline Shaw is Wigmore Hall’s 2024-25 Composer in Residence.

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Latest Release

  • October 25, 2024

    The original score for Ken Burns’s two-part documentary LEONARDO da VINCI, with new compositions by Caroline Shaw, features performances by the composer’s longtime collaborators Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth as well as John Patitucci. Shaw wrote and recorded new music for LEONARDO da VINCI, marking the first time a Ken Burns film has featured an entirely original score. The film is directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, who says: “Caroline’s existing body of music—joyful, daring, at times transcendent, and wholly unique—seemed to speak directly to Leonardo, a seeking soul who, 500 years after his death, can come across as strikingly modern ... The music Caroline created is dynamic, enthralling and filled with wonder."

News

  • September 26, 2024

    “The Last Supper," from Caroline Shaw's original score for Ken Burns's new two-part documentary, LEONARDO da VINCI, is out now, along with a music video you can watch here. The album, with new compositions by Shaw and performances by Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, Roomful of Teeth, and John Patitucci, is due October 25; the documentary airs on November 18 and 19 at 8pm ET on PBS, PBS.org, and the PBS App. Shaw wrote and recorded new music for LEONARDO da VINCI, marking the first time a Ken Burns film has featured an entirely original score.

  • August 15, 2024

    “Senso Comune," from Caroline Shaw's original score for Ken Burns's new two-part documentary, LEONARDO da VINCI, is out now, along with a music video you can watch here. The album, with new compositions by Shaw and performances by Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, Roomful of Teeth, and John Patitucci, is due October 25; the documentary airs on November 18 and 19 at 8pm ET on PBS, PBS.org, and the PBS App. Shaw wrote and recorded new music for LEONARDO da VINCI, marking the first time a Ken Burns film has featured an entirely original score.

Tour

Sun, Oct 06
Oslo,
Opera House
Sun, Oct 06
Oslo,
Opera House
Wed, Oct 09
London,
Wigmore Hall
Wed, Oct 09
London,
Wigmore Hall
Fri, Oct 11
Amsterdam,
Concertgebouw
Fri, Oct 11
Amsterdam,
Concertgebouw
Wed, Oct 16
Ithaca, NY
Ford Hall
Wed, Oct 16
Ithaca, NY
Ford Hall
Fri, Oct 18
Appleton, WI
Lawrence Memorial Chapel
Fri, Oct 18
Appleton, WI
Lawrence Memorial Chapel
Sat, Oct 19
Minneapolis, MN
McGuire Theater, Walker Art Center
Sat, Oct 19
Minneapolis, MN
McGuire Theater, Walker Art Center
Wed, Oct 23
New York, NY
Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92NY
Wed, Oct 23
New York, NY
Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92NY
Fri, Oct 25
Middelbury, VT
Olin C. Robison Concert Hall, Mahaney Arts Center
Fri, Oct 25
Middelbury, VT
Olin C. Robison Concert Hall, Mahaney Arts Center
Sat, Oct 26
Stowe, VT
Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center
Sat, Oct 26
Stowe, VT
Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center
Tue, Oct 29
New York, NY
The Town Hall
Tue, Oct 29
New York, NY
The Town Hall

Photos

About Caroline Shaw

  • The original score for Ken Burns’s new two-part documentary, LEONARDO da VINCI, with new compositions by Caroline Shaw, is available via Nonesuch Records on October 25, 2024; the documentary airs on November 18 and 19 at 8pm ET (check local listings) on PBS, PBS.org, and the PBS App. The album features performances by the composer’s longtime collaborators Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth as well as John Patitucci. Shaw wrote and recorded new music for LEONARDO da VINCI, marking the first time a Ken Burns film has featured an entirely original score. 


    LEONARDO da VINCI is directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon. The film, which explores the life and work of the fifteenth century polymath LEONARDO da VINCI, is Burns’s first non-American subject. It also marks a significant change in the team’s filmmaking style, which includes using split screens with images, video, and sound from different periods to further contextualize Leonardo’s art and scientific explorations. LEONARDO da VINCI looks at how the artist influenced and inspired future generations, and it finds in his soaring imagination and profound intellect the foundation for a conversation we are still having today: what is our relationship with nature and what does it mean to be human?

    “No single person can speak to our collective effort to understand the world and ourselves,” said Ken Burns. “But Leonardo had a unique genius for inquiry, aided by his extraordinary skills as an artist and scientist, that helps us better understand the natural world that we are part of and to appreciate more fully what it means to be alive and human.”

    “To help give depth and dimension to Leonardo’s inner life, and to carry our viewers on his personal journey, we enlisted the composer Caroline Shaw,” McMahon says in the album’s liner note. “Caroline’s existing body of music—joyful, daring, at times transcendent, and wholly unique—seemed to speak directly to Leonardo, a seeking soul who, 500 years after his death, can come across as strikingly modern. A fully original score, we believed, would add crucial connective tissue to areas where the record of Leonardo’s life is thin and it’s possible to briefly lose his trail. The music Caroline created is dynamic, enthralling and filled with wonder.

    “This soundtrack is a testament to the inspired efforts of Jennifer Dunnington, who marshaled it into being, the brilliant musicians and vocalists who, with the help of Alex Venguer, Neal Shaw, Colton Dodd and Tim Marchiafava, made it soar, and most of all Caroline Shaw, who might be Leonardo’s soulmate from across time,” he continues. “With her help, the Leonardo who emerges is no wizard shrouded in mystery, but a prideful, obsessive, at times lonely or flustered, occasionally ecstatic, and, in the end, content man who is in ways both modern and thoroughly of his time.”

    “As we set out to explore Leonardo’s life, we realized that while he was very much a man of his time, he was also interested in something more universal,” said Sarah Burns. “Leonardo was uniquely focused on finding connections throughout nature, something that strikes us as very modern today, but which of course has a long history.”

    Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several Grammy awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She has worked with a range of artists including Rosalía, Renée Fleming, and Yo-Yo Ma, and she has contributed music to films and TV series including Fleishman Is in Trouble, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, and Beyoncé’s Homecoming. In addition to three albums with Sō Percussion, Narrow Sea, Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part, and Rectangles and Circumstance, Nonesuch has released her two Grammy-winning albums Orange and Evergreen, both of which feature Attacca Quartet. “Two-Step” and “Ghost,” Shaw’s songs with Ringdown, her duo with Danni Lee Parpan, are available now on Nonesuch. Caroline Shaw is Wigmore Hall’s 2024-25 Composer in Residence.

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