Caroline Shaw, Alicia Olatuja & Sō Percussion Will Perform RECTANGLES AND CIRCUMSTANCE at 92NY

The 92nd Street Y, New York will present Caroline Shaw, Alicia Olatuja & Sō Percussion: Rectangles and Circumstance on Wednesday, October 23, 2024 at 7:30pm on the David Geffen Stage at Kaufmann Concert Hall. Tickets start at $40 and are available at https://www.92ny.org/event/caroline-shaw-and-so-percussion.

Pulitzer Prize- and triple Grammy-winning composer and vocalist Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion - the ensemble redefining chamber music for the 21st century - mesmerized in their 92NY performance in 2023 with music from their acclaimed Nonesuch recording Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part. They return with the New York premiere of music from their acclaimed new album, Rectangles and Circumstance - a beguiling blend of poetry and sonic possibility based on words by Emily Dickinson, William Blake, Gertrude Stein, and others. The program culminates in their striking reimagining of Schubert's "An die Musik," which Sō percussionist Adam Sliwinski describes as akin to "a sunken cathedral emerging out of the murky depths of an ancient underwater city." Weaving her own spell, soprano Alicia Olatuja joins Sō for Narrow Sea, the 2017 work Shaw created for Sō Percussion - earning a Grammy in its recording with Dawn Upshaw - a haunting exploration of the shape-shifting nature of water, with texts drawn from The Sacred Harp.

Notes on the program are available at https://www.92ny.org/program-notes/concerts/102324.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

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 works often in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist. Caroline is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several Grammy awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship.

Recent projects include the score to Fleishman Is in Trouble (FX/Hulu); vocal work with singer Rosalía on her album Motomami ; the film score to Josephine Decker's The Sky Is Everywhere ; music for The National Theatre (London) production of The Crucible ; choreographer Justin Peck's Partita with New York City Ballet, a new stage work Life (Gandini Juggling/Merce Cunningham Trust); the US premiere of Microfictions Vol. 3 with the New York Philharmonic and Roomful of Teeth; a live orchestral score for Wu Tsang's silent film Moby Dick, co-composed with Andrew Yee; two albums on Nonesuch (Evergreen and The Blue Hour); the score for Helen Simoneau's dance work Delicate Power; tours of Graveyards & Gardens (an immersive theatrical work co-created with Vanessa Goodman); and tours with Sō Percussion featuring songs from Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part (Nonesuch), amid occasional chamber music appearances as violist (Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, La Jolla Music Society).

Shaw has written over 100 works in the last decade, for Anne Sofie Von Otter, Davóne Tines, Yo-Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonia Baroque, Seattle Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Aizuri Quartet, The Crossing, Dover Quartet, Calidore Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, Miró Quartet, I Giardini, Ars Nova Copenhagen, Ariadne Greif, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Britt Festival, and the Vail Dance Festival. She has contributed production to albums by Rosalía, Woodkid, and Nas. Her work as vocalist or composer has appeared in several films, TV series, and podcasts including The Humans, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, Beyonce's Homecoming, Tár, Dolly Parton's America, and More Perfect.

Praised by The New York Times as "a singer with a strong and luscious tone," Alicia Olatuja astounds audiences with her exquisite vocals, artistic versatility and captivating demeanor. She first entered the national spotlight in 2013, while performing as the featured soloist with the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir at President Barack Obama's second inauguration. Shortly thereafter, she assembled her own jazz-based ensemble and recorded her first solo album, Timeless (2014), followed by Intuition: Songs from the Minds of Women (2019). Her current album, Olatuja(2024) is a reunion recording with bassist Michael Olatuja, with whom she's been touring since 2021, that blends afro-beat, jazz, funk and soul.

Originally from St. Louis, MO, Olatuja grew up immersed in a wide range of musical styles, including gospel, soul, jazz and classical. These influences have informed her artistic journey, and she later graduated with a master's degree in classical voice/opera from the Manhattan School of Music. After appearing in numerous operatic and musical theater productions, she started to perform more regularly in gospel and jazz concerts and worked with such esteemed artists as Chaka Khan, BeBe Winans, Christian McBride, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Billy Childs, and Chris Botti. Her classical performances have included works by Steven Mackey (Afterlife) and Caroline Shaw (Narrow Sea), both with Sō Percussion, and Osvaldo Golijov (Oceana) with the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra (Marin Alsop, conductor). Most recently she performed at Carnegie Hall with trumpeter and musical director Sean Jones and NYO Jazz, followed by a tour of South Africa.

For twenty years and counting, Sō Percussion has redefined chamber music for the 21st century through an "exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam" (The New Yorker).

Sō's commitment to the creation and amplification of new work, and their extraordinary powers of perception and communication have made them a trusted partner for composers, allowing the writing of music that expands the style and capacity of brilliant voices of our time. Sō's collaborative composition partners include Caroline Shaw, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Nathalie Joachim, Dan Trueman, Kendall K. Williams, Angélica Negrón, Shodekeh Talifero, claire rousay, Leilehua Lanzilotti, Bora Yoon, Olivier Tarpaga, Bobby Previte, Matmos, and many others.

In the current season, Sō and Caroline Shaw perform a program highlighting their newest album, Rectangles and Circumstance, at the Barbican in London, the BOZAR in Brussels, Saffron Hall in Essex, and 92NY. Recent Sō highlights have included performances at Carnegie Hall, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Big Ears, Cal Performances, the Palau de la Musica Catalana in Barcelona, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Penn Live Arts in Philadelphia, the Hancher Auditorium at the University of Iowa, the Oklahoma Philharmonic, the Library of Congress., touring Benin and Burkina Faso with Olivier Tarpaga, and more.

In addition to Rectangles and Circumstances, their recent albums with Caroline Shaw include Let the Soil Play its Simple Part and the Grammy-award winning Narrow Sea with Dawn Upshaw and Gilbert Kalish, all on Nonesuch Records. Other recent albums include an acclaimed version of Julius Eastman's Stay On It, and Darian Donovan Thomas's Individuate. This adds to a catalog of more than twenty-five albums featuring landmark recordings of works by Steve Reich, Steven Mackey, and David Lang among others.

In fall 2024, Sō Percussion began its eleventh year as the Edward T. Cone Performers-in-Residence at Princeton University. Rooted in the belief that music is an elemental form of human communication, and galvanized by forces for social change, Sō enthusiastically pursues a range of social and community outreach through their nonprofit umbrella, including partnerships with local ensembles including Brooklyn's Pan in Motion; their Sō Laboratories concert series; a studio residency program in Brooklyn; fundraising for the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen; and the Sō Percussion Summer Institute, an intensive two-week chamber music seminar for percussionists and composers.