Pulitzer Prize-Winning Vocal Piece Comes to Times Square With Free Performances

Times Square Arts, in partnership with PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now Festival, presents Caroline Shaw's Partita for 8 Voices with performances at 4:00 pm and 7:00 pm on Monday, January 7 in Times Square at the Broadway Plaza between 43rd and 44th Streets. Each performance is 25 minutes long.

Times Square Arts welcomes PROTOTYPE's Out of Bounds series, which brings free, site-specific work to public spaces and is curated in its third season by Raul Zbengheci. The featured presentation of 2019 is Caroline Shaw's joyous and playful Pulitzer Prize-winning (2013) work, Partita for 8 Voices, performed by Roomful of Teeth, the Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble of which Shaw is a member. Times Square Arts partners with PROTOTYPE for this first-ever presentation of the piece staged and choreographed in a public space. There will be two amplified performances free and open to the public, the first taking place at 4:00 pm and the second at 7:00 pm.

Partita for 8 Voices is a 25-minute piece imagined ten years ago by Shaw on 3:00 am walks through Times Square. The work is divided into four movements-Allemande, Sarabande, Courante, and Passacaglia-and draws stylistically from square dance calls, the American folk hymn, "Shining Shore," and the guided wall drawings of artist Sol LeWitt, "uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects" (Pulitzer Committee). The artist duo Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya with LEIMAY Ensemble will interweave dance into the vocal performance, exploring how the music relates to the plaza and passersby.