Caroline Shaw

I was curious about experimenting with different colors - kind of like having an expanded orchestra. Suddenly, instead of just writing for strings, you can add bassoon and oboe and brass. I like these extreme differences in sounds right next to each other. ”

There's a bit of a new guard of contemporary classical musicians in New York, and we play a lot of different kinds of music together. We do pop studio sessions, and we'll also play John Cage and more avant-garde work. We're developing a language of music that comes with a lot of different styles, different kinds of work. ”

It was sort of an experiment to try to leave the violin. Can I be a real person without this thing? It was a big part of my identity. ”

Partita' is a simple piece. Born of a love of surface and structure, of the human voice, of dancing and tired ligaments, of music, and of our basic desire to draw a line from one point to another. ”

I've been gearing up for this future of writing a lot of new music by digging into my favorite old stuff, and twisting it around and highlighting the things I really love. ”

Living in New York City, you have to keep trying to do a lot of things. ”

Be free, and live life fully. ”

I've done a lot of performance practice, Baroque playing, and some of the joy and the challenge of it is figuring out what the composer intended... You have music of the 17th century - it's all whole notes and half notes. But inside of that, there are so many things that one can do, at least according to what we know about performance practice. ”

I guess I'd like people to be able to forget a lot of things and just enjoy the beauty of harmony and melody for a moment. ”

I could read music and sing all the right notes at the right time. And over time, I literally found my voice, found a way to make sound. ”