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for vocalist Luciana Souza and A Far
Cry. Future seasons will see a piano
concerto for soloist Jonathan Biss with
the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra as
well as a new work for the Los Angeles
Philharmonic.
Unlike composers like John Corigli-
ano who got their start in the serial-
ism-dominated compositional world
of the mid- to late th century, Shaw
has emerged in a musical scene brim-
ming with a plethora of sounds and
approaches.
“ ere’s a pretty varied landscape
now,” Shaw says, “which is both exciting
and daunting because there is a lot on
the table. ere is no one particular way
to write music. I really stick up for the
things that I believe in. I really love har-
mony and I really love melody, and not
in a neo-Romantic way. I’m not trying
to write something that sounds like it
was from the th century.”
Her approach has also been a ected
by works from the past (particularly the
Baroque era) and present that she has
played as a violinist or sung as a vocalist.
is was especially true of her recent pi-
ano quartet,
ousandth Orange,
which
draws on the “really thrilling, moving
chamber music experiences” Shaw has
had playing Johannes Brahms’s music,
according to a blog post accompanying
performances of the piece in England.
She found it impossible to write for this
combination of instruments without
referencing Brahms, who wrote three
famed piano quartets, so it has what she
calls “odd echoes and transformations”
throughout.
Shaw has friends in the worlds of pop
music and hip-hop, and she believes that
they all share similar musical values.
“I just tend to handle the melody and
harmony in a slightly di erent way that
comes from playing the [John] Adams
and [Salvatore] Sciarrino sort of th-
and st-century modernist composers.
[ e contrast isn’t in] loving those
colors and tools but knowing that they
use them in a way that I would not, and
I’m trying to gure out what those tools
and colors mean to me.”
Stretching Shaw as a composer has
been her work with the famed rapper,
singer, and songwriter Kanye West. e
two met in
when he attended a
Los Angeles Philharmonic concert as
part of its Next on Grand Festival. On
the program was Roomful of Teeth and
a string quartet performing the West
Coast premiere of Shaw’s
Ritornello .
.
West was so taken with what he heard
that he sought out the composer at
intermission.
Since then, Shaw has collaborated
with West on an iPhone app as well his
last couple of albums, the
release
e Life of Pablo
and this summer’s
Ye
.
She can be heard on vocals, violin, and
synthesizer, contributing inventive ri s
and sounds. “It’s
a di erent kind
of composition
in that world,”
she says, “where
it’s collabora-
tive and o en
from a distance.
You’re working
with di erent
materials and
combining them
in di erent ways.
But he ultimately
is the one who is
curating both the
collaboration and
the nal music
that comes out.”
Although she
is writing many
more works that
she did in the
past, she has
continued to steer
clear of larger
works for orchestra (the Los Angeles
commission will be the rst) and hasn’t
tackled an opera. Indeed, one of her
more ambitious projects to date is the
-minute work that will be heard at
Ravinia.
A er collaborating with Shaw
previously, Sō Percussion asked if she
would be interested in writing a piece
for the unusual combination of Upshaw,
Kalish, and the quartet with the support
of the commissioning consortium Music
Accord. ey wanted her to write some-
thing along the lines of
Winds of Destiny
from George Crumb’s series
American
Songbook
, which uses the same combi-
nation of artists.
She took part in a yearlong series of
workshops with Sō Percussion, experi-
menting with possible instruments and
novel sounds. e piece makes use of
traditional percussion instruments like
the marimba and vibraphone, but it also
incorporates owerpots, bowls of water,
and what she called a “suitcase drum
set” with tin cans, temple blocks, and a
rattle made of goat’s toes. “A percussion
quartet is unusual to write for,” she says,
“but they are also incredibly collabo-
rative musicians, and they are always
interested in trying out new objects and
new sounds and new toys.”
In
Winds of Destiny
, Crumb creates
new settings of American folk songs,
recontextualizing them in unexpected,
new ways but preserving the original
melody. Shaw goes even further, keeping
the lyrics of the four songs she has
chosen but totally deconstructing them
otherwise. “ ey have a relationship,”
she says of the two compositions, “but
I wasn’t necessarily responding to the
Crumb. Mine sounds utterly di erent. It
couldn’t be more di erent.”
In
Narrow Sea
(the title is drawn
I really love
harmony and
I really love
melody, and
not in a neo-
Romantic
way. I’m not
trying to write
something that
sounds like it
was from the
19th century.
RAVINIA MAGAZINE | AUGUST 20 – SE3TEM%ER 2, 2018
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