Sō Percussion with Caroline Shaw
So Percussion and Caroline Shaw come together to push music beyond its boundaries.
The creative roots and shoots of Pulitzer-winning composer, violinist, vocalist and producer Caroline Shaw and contemporary chamber innovators Sō Percussion have proved excitingly far-ranging over the years, across unconventional instrumentation and unconstrained styles. These New York-based artists have also connected and entwined in various enticing ways – having originally met as grad students at Yale, and then at Princeton, where Sō members (then performers-in-residence) presented a course on writing for percussion.
‘We designed a year-long experience where composers work through a number of playing techniques and instruments,’ recalls Sō’s Adam Sliwinski. ‘Caroline was enamoured of flowerpots, which became a motif she has employed in every piece we do together.’
Around five years ago, Sō asked Shaw to write a piece for them with the US soprano Dawn Upshaw, which became Narrow Sea: a gorgeously flowing, folky and hymnal five-part work, which would lend its title to a Grammy-winning 2021 release on Nonesuch Records; this collection would also feature an earlier Sō/Shaw collaboration, the unexpectedly stirring Taxidermy (which does indeed feature flowerpots). The recording process for Narrow Sea also gave rise to another batch of collaborative songs, and Shaw’s second widely acclaimed album of 2021: the richly earthy melodies and otherworldly ambience of Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part.
Tonight’s live performance reunites Sō Percussion (Sliwinski alongside bandmates Jason Treuting, Josh Quillen and Eric Cha-Beach) with Shaw, to embrace all the sonic possibilities of their collaborative material, in the atmospheric setting of Milton Court Concert Hall.
Shaw explains: ‘What I love about Sō is the curiosity about how objects make sounds and how they speak to each other. [There was an] underlying thread of thinking about what goes into soil, how we take care of it, how we allow it to be itself, how we contain it, and what can come out of it if you cultivate the right environment, which for me is always this wonderful metaphor for creativity and collaboration: let people be themselves and see what happens.’
Sō Percussion will also open the set with two contrasting examples of their collaborative works. Angélica Negrón’s absorbing, impulsive Gone (2018) and Go Back (2022) has a playful edge, with Sō incorporating Bricolo robotic instruments designed by Nick Yulman. Julia Wolfe’s Forbidden Love (2019) is a kind of serenade to stepping out of the box, described by Wolfe as ‘all the things you aren’t supposed to do to string instruments’.
‘The works on this concert represent some of the experiments we are most proud of over the last few years: Negrón’s robots, Wolfe’s modified string quartet, and Shaw’s song forms each extend the idea of what percussion can mean,’ enthuses Sliwinski. ‘Each also represents a deep collaboration – it would be impossible to imagine any of them arriving in the mail without an extensive process of development first.
‘Julia invented an entirely new vocabulary of sounds and gestures on string instruments with us together in the room, involving bowing with string, playing with thimbles, and both drawing and striking with chopsticks. Angélica’s robots perform precisely timed actions that coincide with what we play. Caroline’s Narrow Sea was workshopped extensively before the final version, and our album Let the Soil Play its Simple Part was co-composed.’
Numerous beguiling details unfold within these sound worlds. Let The Soil… combines original lyrics with the yearning expressions of 18th-century spirituals, excerpts from James Joyce’s 1922 literary opus Ulysses (on The Flood Is Following Me), and perhaps most surprisingly, a heady retake of ABBA’s 1980 Scandi-pop stormer Lay All Your Love On Me: here stripped back to a strangely timeless, emotionally raw choral.
‘Each of us created a duet with Caroline for Let the Soil… and for mine we decided – it was her idea – to take ABBA’s Lay All Your Love… eliminate the verses, slow it way down, and somehow make a medieval motet for voice and marimba.,’ says Sliwinski. ‘It was the weirdest and most unexpected adaptation, and until I heard it all together in the studio I couldn’t even tell if it was working or not. It turned out to be successful, and it creates kind of a lynchpin for the middle of the set of that music that I am extremely proud of.’
Shaw has described this reinterpretation as ‘really a Bach chorale’, adding: ‘Also, the idea of someone singing: “Don’t go wasting your emotion/ Lay all your love on me/ Don’t go sharing your devotion/ Lay all your love on me” over and over again very slowly, there’s a certain tragedy in it. And then Adam did some absolutely exquisite layering that built this stunning world from the marimba.’
These collaborative sparks should prove particularly vivid throughout a set that reflects deep-rooted rapport and boundless vision, as Sliwinski says: ‘The magic we have together comes out of the place where her incredible intuition for harmony, melody, and words meets with our rhythmic cycles. A number of songs on Let the Soil, like our opening song ‘To the Sky’, consist of exactly that: Jason’s patterning creates a bed of propulsion, on top of which Caroline’s melodies, vocoder harmonies, and text choices soar.’
© Arwa Haider
Details
Programme and performers
Angélica Negrón Gone
Go Back
Julia Wolfe Forbidden Love
Caroline Shaw Selections from Narrow Sea
Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion Selections from Let the Soil Play its Simple Part
Sō Percussion
Joshua Quillen
Adam Sliwinski
Eric Cha-Beach
Jason Treuting
Caroline Shaw vocals
Song texts
So fades the lovely blooming flow’r
Frail solace of an hour
So soon our transient comforts fly
And pleasure blooms to die.
Is there no kind, no healing art
To soothe my anguished heart
Spirit of grace be ever nigh
Thy comforts not to die.
Let gentle patience smile on pain
Till hope revives again
Hope wipes the tear from sorrow’s eye
And faith points to the sky.
Lyrics by Anne Steele
(source The Sacred Harp Hymnal, 1760)
Rhythm begins, you see. I hear.
The flood is following me
The flood is following me
And it's almost a chorus but
Probably still a verse
Spins around
The flood is following me
The flood is following me.
Lyrics by James Joyce from Ulysses (1922)
& Caroline Shaw
every angle has its fabled
tangent tied behind the backs of
folded hours found about the
rounded corners
counted towards what never
quite arrived in time
an asymptote
a rhyme
unfurled and
further curling
further finding
cursive foiling
wrapped around
this mortal coil
let the soil
let the soil
let the soil
let the soil
let the soil play its simple part
Do you ever think of me?
I hope that you are well.
lyrically we seem to be
sympatically derived from
integers insistent on a
keen resistance
pen in hand you handed me
your altogether pen in hand
you handed me your further
curling further finding cursive
foiling wrapped around this mortal
coil let the soil let the soil let
the soil let the soilletthe
soilletthesoilletthesoilletthes o i
l l e tt h e s o il let the soil
play its simple part.
Do you ever think of me?
I hope that you are well
Lyrics by Caroline Shaw
Ago, ago, ago
Time until
Ago, ago, ago
Hours fill
Long ago we counted
One, two, three, four, five, six
Ago, ago, ago, ago, ago
Hours find
Ago, ago, ago, ago, ago
Fit the line
Long ago we …
One, three
Until, until, until
Side by side
Until, until, until
By and by
Again, again, again
Long ago we …
One.
Lyrics by Caroline Shaw
I am a poor wayfaring stranger
While journeying through this world of woe
That there's no sickness, toil, or danger
In that bright land to which I go.
I'm going there to see my father
I'm going there no more to roam
I'm only going over Jordan
I'm only going over home.
I know dark clouds will gather over me
I know my way is rough and steep
Yet beauteous fields lie just before me.
I'm going there to see my mother
She said she'd meet me when I come
I'm only going over Jordan
I'm only going over home.
Lyrics from No 457 of The Sacred Harp
(source: Joseph Bever’s Christian Songster, 1858)
This
slow
day
moves
Along the room
I
hear
its
axles
go
A gradual dazzle
upon
the ceiling
Gives me that
racy
bluishyellow
feeling
As hours
blow
the wide
way
Down my afternoon.
Lyrics by Anne Carson from Hopper: Confessions – ‘Room in Brooklyn’, published in
Men in the Off Hours (2000)
Don’t go wasting your emotion
Lay all your love on me.
Don’t go sharing your devotion
Lay all your love on me.
Lyrics by Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus (ABBA)
Tolling are the versions of
Slight versions of the same
Varied similarities.
Cast the bells in the sand
Cast the bells in the sand
Cast the bells in the sand
A singular voice, alone
Is its own.
Lyrics by Josh Quillen
Some Bright Morning
Some bright morning
When this life is over
I'll fly away
To that home on that
celestial shore
I'll fly away
When the shadows
of this life are over,
I'll …
Oh glory
Oh morning
When I die
Hallelujah by and by
I'll fly away.
Lyrics by Albert E Brumley from I’ll Fly Away (1929)
Did not : no, no:
All is lost now
A veil awave upon the waves
Wait while you wait.
Lyrics by James Joyce from Ulysses
Find where you go
Behind the glare
Is what I know
The melody climbs higher.
The song is in the fold
The harmony is cold
What's old is new
Is ever, ever told.
I go, I go …
I go where you are
I know there is no
Assigned melody.
The song is in the fold
The harmony is cold
What's old is new is old
is ever, ever told.
The detail …
Find the line
Find the line.
I go where you go.
Lyrics by Caroline Shaw
Artist biographies
For 20 years and counting, Sō Percussion have redefined chamber music for the 21st century. The group is celebrated for a wide range of work, be it vibrant live performances or an extravagantly wide array of collaborations encompassing classical music, pop, indie rock, contemporary dance and theatre. Equally important is their work in education and community, creating opportunities and platforms for music and artists that explore the immense possibility of art in our time.
Recent highlights have included performances at the Elbphilharmonie, Big Ears 2022 – where they performed Amid the Noise, premiered a new work by Angélica Negrón with the Kronos Quartet and performed their Nonesuch album with Caroline Shaw, Let the Soil play its Simple Part – as well as a return to Carnegie Hall where they performed new collaborations with Nathalie Joachim and Dominic Shodekeh Talifero. Their Nonesuch recording, Narrow Sea, with Caroline Shaw, Dawn Upshaw and Gilbert Kalish, won the 2022 Grammy for Best Composition. This adds to a catalogue of more than 25 albums featuring landmark recordings of works by David Lang, Steve Reich, Steve Mackey, and many more.
Last summer Sō performed at the Music Academy of the West Festival, Newport Classical, at Time Spans in New York, and in Helsinki – including a performance of Let the Soil with Caroline Shaw. Highlights this season include concerts for Cal Performances, at the Palau de la Musica Catalana in Barcelona, Kennedy Center and at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
This autumn marks Sō’s ninth 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 in recent years, Sō enthusiastically pursues a range of social and community outreach through their nonprofit organisation, including partnerships with local ensembles including Pan in Motion and Castle of Our Skins; their Brooklyn Bound concert series; a studio residency program in Brooklyn; and the Sō Percussion Summer Institute, an intensive two-week chamber music seminar for percussionists and composers.
Sō Percussion’s 2022–23 season is supported in part by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Alice M Ditson Fund of Columbia University, the Amphion Foundation, the Brookby Foundation, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Fan Fox and Leslie R Samuels Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.
Sō Percussion uses Vic Firth sticks, Zildjian cymbals, Remo drumheads, Estey Organs, and Pearl/Adams instruments. Sō Percussion would like to thank these companies for their generous support and donations.
Caroline Shaw is a New York-based vocalist, violinist, composer and producer who performs in solo and collaborative projects. She was the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 for Partita for 8 Voices, written for the Grammy-winning Roomful of Teeth, of which she is a member. Recent commissions include new works for Renée Fleming with Inon Barnatan, Dawn Upshaw with Sō Percussion and Gil Kalish, Seattle Symphony, Anne Sofie von Otter with Philharmonia Baroque, the LA Philharmonic, Juilliard 415, the Orchestra of St Luke’s with John Lithgow, the Dover Quartet, TENET, The Crossing, the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, the Calidore Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, the Baltimore Symphony and Roomful of Teeth with A Far Cry.
Her film scores include Erica Fae’s To Keep the Light and Josephine Decker’s Madeline's Madeline , as well as the upcoming short 8th Year of the Emergency by Maureen Towey. She has produced for Kanye West (The Life of Pablo; Ye) and Nas (NASIR), and has contributed to records by The National and by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry.
She studied at Rice, Yale and Princeton, currently teaches at NYU, and is a Creative Associate at the Juilliard School. She has held residencies at Dumbarton Oaks, the Banff Centre, Music on Main and the Vail Dance Festival.