Thirty year old Caroline Shaw won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Music for her a capella composition Partita for 8 Voices.
“I think up to now people have known me as a violinist and vocalist. I guess now people are going to know me as a composer”, said Shaw in a phone interview for Billboard after she won the prestigious award that is being given every year to outstanding American journalists, literates and musicians for works published in the previous year.
Even though the Pulitzer Prize is being awarded to experienced composers and musicians, Caroline Shaw deserved it for her piece she composed for her vocal octet Roomful of Teeth, an ensemble that can be described as baroque and contemporary at the same time. They released their first album of the same name last October with all four movements of the awarded 26 minutes suite.
The award that contains 10.000 USD prize money brings a lot of media attention as well. Among this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Music finalists were a jazz musician we already had the chance to watch at the Jazz Fest Sarajevo, Wadada Leo Smith with his work Ten Freedom Summers, we have been writing about, and former Pulitzer winner, composer Aaron Jay Kernis with his composition Pieces of Winter Sky.
Listen to one movement of the Partita.