Caroline Adelaide Shaw (born August 1, 1982) is an American composer, violinist, and singer celebrated for her boundary-pushing contributions to contemporary classical music. She rose to international prominence in 2013 when she became the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music for Partita for 8 Voices, praised for its inventive use of speech, whispers, sighs, and other extended vocal techniques. She later won the 2022 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for Narrow Sea and the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for Rectangles and Circumstance.

 

Born in Greenville, North Carolina, Shaw began violin studies at age two with her mother and grew up immersed in church music and recordings she meticulously collected from her local classical radio station. She started composing at age 10, inspired by Mozart and Brahms. Shaw earned her Bachelor of Music from Rice University in 2004, spent a year as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow, completed her master’s degree in violin at Yale in 2007, and entered Princeton University’s PhD program in composition in 2010.

 

As a performer, Shaw appears with ensembles such as Roomful of Teeth and the American Contemporary Music Ensemble, and she has collaborated with groups ranging from Trinity Wall Street Choir and Attacca Quartet to Ensemble Signal and the Mark Morris Dance Group Ensemble. Her music has been widely commissioned and performed, including works premiered at the BBC Proms and by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She has held residencies at Dumbarton Oaks and Music on Main, and her output spans concert works, film and television scores, and cross-genre collaborations.

 

Shaw’s creative reach extends beyond classical circles: she co-produced Kanye West’s remix of “Say You Will,” contributed vocals to The Life of Pablo, wrote music for films such as Madeline’s Madeline, and collaborated with Rosalía on her 2025 album Lux. In the early 2020s, she also formed Ringdown, an electronic cinematic pop duo whose debut album Lady on a Bike was released in 2025.

 

Shaw’s string quartet Entr’acte (2011) reflects her fascination with classical forms viewed through a modern, quietly surreal lens. Inspired by the Brentano Quartet’s performance of Haydn’s Op. 77 No. 2—especially the unexpected shift to the D-flat major trio—Shaw models the piece on a traditional minuet and trio while stretching the form into new and surprising territory. Throughout Entr’acte, she experiments with texture and color: moments where players damp their strings create hollow, pitchless whispers, and the work’s luminous harmonies shape its distinctive atmosphere. The result is a piece that feels both rooted in classical tradition and transformed by a contemporary imagination.

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"Entr’acte was written in 2011 after hearing the Brentano Quartet play Haydn’s Op. 77 No. 2 — with their spare and soulful shift to the D-flat major trio in the minuet. It is structured like a minuet and trio, riffing on that classical form but taking it a little further. I love the way some music (like the minuets of Op. 77) suddenly takes you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass, in a kind of absurd, subtle, technicolor transition."

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- Caroline Shaw

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