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MUSIC NOTES Violinist, Composer is Youngest Pulitzer Music Prize Recipient V iolinist and composer Caroline Shaw won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music in April, making her only the fourth woman to receive the honor. At the age of 30, she's also the youngest ever recipient in the seventyyear history of the music prize. The four-movement work, Partita for 8 Voices, was written for her ensemble Roomful of Teeth and built on the Baroque dance forms. The Pulitzer music jury noted Shaw's "highly polished and inventive a cappella work uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects." The prize also bestows $10,000. The composition was written over the course of several summers, during her ensemble's residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the center for contemporary art in North Adams, Mass. The North Carolina native began violin at age 2 and only began singing in college. A Princeton doctoral fellow in composition, she earned a Bachelor's Degree in Violin Performance from Rice University and a Master's Degree in Violin from Yale University. Hers is the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to someone in the Department of Music at Princeton. "I've spent a lot of time playing Bach partitas," she said in a Princeton website interview. "One of my first jobs was to play for ballet and modern dance classes, so the music in Partita is kind of like choreography for me." Shaw performs as a violinist with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) and works with the Trinity Wall Street Choir, Alarm Will Sound, Wordless Music, Signal, The Yehudim, Victoire, the Mark Morris Dance Group Ensemble and Opera Cabal. Her work has been performed by So Percussion, ACME and the Brentano String Quartet, the Edward T. Cone Performers-inResidence at Princeton. The 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music For distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000). Awarded to Caroline Shaw for "Partita for 8 Voices," recording released by New Amsterdam Records on October 30, 2012, a highly polished and inventive a cappella work uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects. — pulitzer.org Caroline Shaw, the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Gerald Levinson, Jane Lang Professor of Music, Dept. of Music and Dance, Swarthmore College Carol Oja, William Powell Mason Professor of Music, Harvard University Howard Reich, jazz critic, Chicago Tribune The 2013 Pulitzer Music JURY CLICK FOR MORE Jeremy Geffen, director, artistic planning, Carnegie Hall, New York City (Chair) Muhal Richard Abrams, pianist and composer, New York City For more information about Caroline Shaw, visit carolineshaw.com SAI & The Music Pulitzer 1943: National Art Associate William Schuman, Secular Cantata No. 2: A Free Song 1979: National Art Associate Joseph Schwantner, Aftertones of Infinity 1996: National Art Associate George Walker, Lilacs, for soprano and orchestra 1957: Composers Bureau Member Norman Dello Joio, Meditations on Ecclesiastes 1980: Composers Bureau Member David Del Tredici, In Memory of a Summer Day 1997: National Art Associate Wynton Marsalis, Blood on the Fields, oratorio 1962: National Art Associate Robert Ward, The Crucible, opera 1983: Beta Alpha initiate Ellen Zwilich, Three Movements for Orchestra (Symphony No. 1) 2001: Composers Bureau Member John Corigliano, Symphony No. 2, for string orchestra 1966: Composers Bureau Member Leslie Bassett, Variations for Orchestra 1985: Composers Bureau Member Stephen Albert, Symphony No. 1 "RiverRun" 2003: Composers Bureau Member John Adams, On the Transmigration of Souls 1967: National Art Associate Leon Kirchner, Quartet No. 3 for strings and electronic tape 1986: Composers Bureau Member George Perle, Wind Quintet No. 4, for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon 2004: Composers Bureau Member Paul Moravec, Tempest Fantasy 1988: Composers Bureau Member William Bolcom, 12 New Etudes for Piano 2005: Composers Bureau Member Steven Stucky, Second Concerto for Orchestra 1989: Composers Bureau Member Roger Reynolds, Whispers Out of Time 2006: National Art Associate Yehudi Wyner, Chiavi in Mano 1990: Composers Bureau Member Mel D. Powell, Duplicates: A Concerto 2009: Composers Bureau Member Steve Reich, Double Sextet 1991: Composers Bureau Member Shulamit Ran, Symphony 2010: Composers Bureau Member Jennifer Higdon, Violin Concerto 1969: Composers Bureau Member Karel Husa, String Quartet No. 3 1972: Composers Bureau Member Jacob Druckman, Windows 1975: National Art Associate Dominick Argento, From the Diary of Virginia Woolf 1976: National Art Associate Ned Rorem, Air Music 1977: Composers Bureau Member Richard Wernick, Visions of Terror and Wonder 1993: Composers Bureau Member Christopher Rouse, Trombone Concerto sai-national.org SPRING 2013 PAN PIPES 5

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