#7 - A Conversation with Caroline Shaw
Introduction
This interview is part of The Sonic Atelier – Conversations with Contemporary Composers and Producers, a long-term project dedicated to exploring the evolving role of the composer in the twenty-first century. The series investigates how today’s creators inhabit hybrid identities at the intersection of composition, production, and performance, and how their artistic practices intertwine with technology, aesthetics, and the changing dynamics of the music industry.
In this conversation we meet Caroline Shaw, American composer, violinist, singer, and producer, whose work expands the boundaries between the concert hall, the recording studio, and the screen. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Partita for 8 Voices, Shaw’s music combines historical awareness with experimental curiosity, fusing the physicality of performance with a meticulous sensitivity to sound and space.
Throughout the interview, Shaw reflects on the fluid continuum between composition and production, on her tactile relationship with technology, and on how sound, gesture, and harmony become inseparable elements of her creative process. She discusses the dialogue between acoustic and digital realms, the shifting perception of time and form in contemporary music, and the importance of presence, vulnerability, and shared experience as essential counterpoints to digital mediation.
Her reflections reveal the mindset of an artist who approaches music as a living organism, at once human, technological, and emotional—where notation, sound design, and performance converge into a single, deeply embodied act of creation.
Date of interview: 24 October 2025
Question: Today, we often hear about the hybrid figure of the composer, producer, and performer. Do you identify with this description? And how do these three dimensions coexist in your work?
Caroline Shaw: I definitely identify with that. But I’ve started to prefer simply saying I’m a musician. When someone asks what I do, that feels like the largest, most inclusive umbrella.
It’s funny, I used to think of myself primarily as a violinist. That was the first thing I thought I’d do. Then singing came along the way, and composing followed, at first out of curiosity, a kind of childish desire to make something. Later, when I was playing violin pieces I didn’t really love, I thought: “Maybe I can make something that I’d love more.”
Producing came naturally through meeting different artists. I don’t know if it’s really a trend, but for me everything I do is in service of music, capital M, music. I’m not trying to be a producer or wear multiple labels; I simply have to explore these different roles to understand music more deeply.
When I produce, and I’m not a full-time producer like Jack Antonoff, making record after record, it’s usually in the context of working on someone’s album, like with Rosalía or others. My role in that process isn’t exactly that of an arranger or a composer; it’s more about listening to what people are saying, to what the project itself is asking for. It’s very similar to film scoring, in a way: you listen to what the project needs and ask yourself, “How can I best serve this with everything that I love and everything that I know?”
So that’s what producing feels like to me, everything working in service of a larger whole. It’s quite different from the traditional model of the composer I was taught in school, where you design everything, control it, and hand it to performers.
This more hybrid way of working, performing in the project, contributing fragments of music that become part of something bigger, or designing something as a whole, feels far more interesting to me.
So yes, I definitely identify with that hybrid figure of composer-producer-performer. And as you’ve probably also found, I feel incredibly lucky to have both string playing and composing as parts of my life, it’s like being able to see so many different sides of the same sculpture at once.
Question: Which composers, musical movements, or even just sonic aesthetics have left the strongest impression on you, those whose languages or philosophies resonate most with your way of thinking about music?
Caroline Shaw: There are so many different things. I don’t have a single hero, though when I was younger, I thought I would.
Honestly, I’m constantly inspired by Bach, maybe not his sonic world per se, but his love of music, the breadth of what he created, his constant drive to make things. There’s such complexity, but also so much heart, it’s both emotionally moving and intellectually stimulating at the same time.
As a kid, I loved Mozart, then for about fifteen years I couldn’t listen to him, and now I’m coming back to it. Mozart is everything. What I love is how he can take something seemingly simple and make it infinitely more beautiful within that simplicity. He’ll say, “No, not this melody, this one,” as if it has to be exactly that.
When I was in my twenties, I fell deeply in love with Arvo Pärt. His music will always live inside me. The same goes for David Lang, I think of him as both an artist and a philosopher of music. He’s someone for whom every concept is intentional; he’s not just making things that sound nice. His work is strong, sturdy, and wonderfully strange, I really admire that.
I also have a deep admiration for Jóhann Jóhannsson, his music and his entire approach. The IBM album and many of his early works are extraordinary; what a beautiful mind. There’s something to learn from him: he created these intricate, delicate sound worlds and then began working seriously in film. That world is incredibly demanding, stressful, even. And I’m not sure that working on those big films really served him as an artist in the long run. It feels like a kind of cautionary tale, in a way.
Question: About the creative process, every project has a starting point for you. What is the most frequent one? Is it a melodic or harmonic idea, a specific sound texture, a technical limitation you set for yourself, or maybe an abstract emotion that comes from the story?
Caroline Shaw: Every project is so different. It’s rarely a melodic idea, almost never, actually. It’s usually a texture or a concept, something like “I want this to happen” or “I want to feel this particular thing.” From there, I try to figure out how to get to that feeling, and I start designing all the little things that need to happen along the way.
If it’s a string quartet, I sometimes just start writing and improvising without any plan at all, just following a texture or a sonic impulse and letting it evolve.
Right now, I’m doing something I’ve never done before: I’m making a piece using index cards. I’ve written down all the events I want to happen, there are about fifty cards for a twenty-minute piece. It’s a totally new way of working for me, and I’m really enjoying how tactile and flexible it feels.
It’s also never about starting from an abstract emotion. I know that emotion will come naturally through the process, so I don’t want to decide in advance what I’m supposed to feel. The music itself will tell me what that emotion is, eventually.
Question: In much of today’s music, time is not always developed through linear narration, but rather through repetition and transformation of sound textures, for example. How do you experience time in your own compositions and performances? Do you think of form as a narrative arc, or more as a series of self-contained moments?
Caroline Shaw: I think it’s both, really. It’s a very intuitive process for me. The self-contained moments are important, but so is the pacing between them.
There’s a kind of hierarchy to those moments, some feel large and expansive, some feel small and intimate, and something has to balance them, something that arrives after certain gestures and before others. I can’t always plan that ahead of time, but there’s an intuitive sense of how long it should take to move to the next thing. I don’t even know what that sense is, it’s just something you feel while working.
Question: And do you see choices of sound, time, and texture, as well as production and mixing, when relevant, as a separate phase from composition, or as an inseparable part of the creative act itself?
Caroline Shaw: It’s definitely inseparable. It’s all part of the same creative act, though it may not all happen in the first stage, and it often changes. Sound, timbre, and texture are very malleable; they evolve throughout the process. That doesn’t make them less important, they just respond to where you are in the form and to what the music needs in that particular moment.
Usually, a color change is what leads you from one moment to another. But at the foundation of everything is the harmony, the chords. That’s the element that determines the texture and the colors. One chord has to move to another, and that movement generates the shifts in texture and tone. So while they operate differently, harmony and timbre are inseparable.
Question: Speaking of technology, what role does it play in your process? For some composers today, the DAW has become a primary creative space, almost replacing the score, while for others it’s more of a tool to refine or finalize ideas. How does this balance work for you? Do you still think mainly in terms of notation and live performance, or do you also use technology as a generative space for sound and structure?
Caroline Shaw: I work in Logic and in Sibelius, and for me they’re both simply tools to get somewhere. I wish I could just go straight from my brain to sound without having to touch them at all.
Logic feels to me like a large painting canvas, I can place things here and there, move them around, save new versions every day. It’s flexible, sketch-like, loose, almost like wet paint. I use Logic at the very beginning, just to feel the act of making music, to play on the keyboard, record ideas, and organize them a bit.
Then I move into Sibelius, where I’m still improvising as I write the notes. Everything can still move and change. Sibelius feels like a massive piece of paper, people say, “You should write with pencil and paper,” but for me, paper is too small. Sibelius offers a vast virtual space where ideas can shift and breathe.
When I was working on the film about Leonardo da Vinci, there was so much music that I collaborated with an assistant: I built everything in Logic, and he transferred it into Sibelius for scoring. That was actually the first time I didn’t write a single note by hand. I went through everything and edited, but the core work was all done in Logic.
For my concert music, string quartets, choral works, orchestral pieces, I use Logic only a little at the beginning, then most of the creative work happens directly in Sibelius. For film scoring, though, it’s the opposite. For example, in Fleishman Is in Trouble, I didn’t have to write a single note. Everything was recorded and layered in Logic, that was the whole painting.
So it depends on the project. I like to use technology as a tool, and then leave it behind. It’s important to maintain a healthy relationship with software: to use it efficiently, to know it well, but also not to get trapped inside it. You have to stay on top of it, otherwise it takes over.
Question: Do you ever find yourself thinking in visual or scene-stacking terms, even when you’re not composing for pictures? If so, how do these inner visions influence your musical choices?
Caroline Shaw: Always. I feel like even before I started composing for film, I was already composing for film, I just hadn’t realized it yet. I was making up the scenes in my own mind.
So yes, that visual layer is always there, in some way. It’s part of how I think about pacing, texture, and space, even when there’s no actual image involved.
Question: When you collaborate with others, for example, a producer, a sound engineer, or performers, how do you communicate the sound you have in mind, especially when it comes to emotional qualities such as fragility, darkness, or transparency? Have you developed your own way of translating these feelings into technical or musical directions?
Caroline Shaw: That’s a really interesting question. I’m much more used to communicating with performers, and in that case I usually explain things in person rather than putting too much in the score. Sometimes I’ll include small, even funny notes in the score, but most of the communication happens through direct exchange, showing, singing, or describing a feeling in the moment.
When it comes to working with engineers, like for The Ringdown album, we collaborated with our friend Aaron, and it was wonderful to hand over some control, to let him act as a kind of second producer and really shape the sound.
In the end, it’s quite intuitive. A lot happens in the room, through listening and small gestures rather than through fixed instructions. So I’m not sure I have a clear system, it’s more of a shared sensibility that develops through collaboration.
Question: Have you ever felt the need to annotate or codify, in non-conventional ways, aspects that go beyond pitch and rhythm, such as texture, spatial, or performative elements, as part of your writing process? Do you sometimes use unconventional strategies like sketches, verbal instructions, or other non-traditional forms of notation?
Caroline Shaw: Yes, when it comes to things that notation can’t really express. Traditional notation is great for pitch and rhythm, but terrible for almost everything else.
I’ve found that verbal instructions work best. I’m not someone who uses a lot of non-traditional notation, though there are moments where I use overpressure lines or similar symbols that make sense intuitively to string players.
But if something isn’t intuitive, I find it frustrating. In those cases, I’d rather just write the note and then describe what I want to happen. Sometimes a clear sentence communicates more effectively than any invented symbol.
Question: In my research, I’m exploring the possibility of a compositional framework that could reflect the continuity between the acoustic and the digital domains, one that includes not only notes and rhythm, but also parameters such as space, gesture, and aspects of production as integral parts of the creative process. The idea is to imagine a practical and intuitive tool that could be accessible both to classically trained musicians and to those coming from electronic music. How do you see the potential of such an approach?
Caroline Shaw: That’s a fascinating idea. I think there’s real potential in developing a tool that helps connect those different dimensions, acoustic, digital, gestural, spatial, because that’s how many of us already experience composition today. Even when I’m writing for voices or strings, I’m often thinking about sound in a physical and spatial way, and about how technology shapes that space.
At the same time, when you write music for other people to perform, there’s a kind of communication that no system can fully capture, something deeply human that happens in the room, between bodies, voices, and instruments. That’s why any framework like this would need to stay open and adaptable.
I think what’s emerging now is a shared language between traditions: musicians who move between performing, composing, producing, and designing sound. That hybrid fluency is already a kind of framework in itself, one that allows us to navigate freely between notation, production, and the physical act of making sound. It’s almost like an ecosystem where the acoustic and digital coexist naturally.
Question: How do you think about space in your music? Do you consider the acoustic environment, the way sound resonates in a room or the physical placement of performers, as part of the compositional process?
Caroline Shaw: I always think about the place where a piece will be performed for the first time. If it’s a concert work, I design it for that day, that hall, those people. I rarely imagine specific spatial arrangements, unless I know the performers personally, for instance, I’m writing a percussion piece right now, and I can picture exactly where each of the four musicians will be on stage and how they’ll move. But that’s unusual.
In general, I think about the audience, the context of the concert, the repertoire usually performed in that hall, and the sound of the ensemble itself. It’s almost like creating an installation within a particular environment, shaping something that belongs to that specific place and community.
Question: In a world dominated by digital and often solitary listening, how important is live performance in your work? Do you see it as a central part of your artistic identity, and in what ways does it shape the way you compose or collaborate?
Caroline Shaw: I think I write different kinds of music for different kinds of listening. My film scores, like Fleishman Is in Trouble, will never be performed live, they exist entirely within that world, and I love them for what they are.
But being a human being in this world, sharing time and sound with other people, that’s something I could never give up. If we lost that, it wouldn’t be the kind of world I’d want to live in.
Part of my identity is to keep creating music that people can make together. Writing a string quartet may feel old-fashioned, but it’s still one of the most moving things to play and to listen to. I love that it can exist entirely without electronics, sustained only by human breath, touch, and vibration.
At the same time, I love performing with my band, using synths and electronics, exploring another side of that experience. For me, these two worlds, the acoustic and the electronic, don’t cancel each other out; they expand what it means to make and share music.
Question: In your live projects, do you integrate technology or electronics as part of the performance space, or do you prefer to keep the focus on the acoustic dimension?
Caroline Shaw: Yes, I have integrated technology and electronics, it really depends on the project. For string quartet, orchestra, or choir, I don’t think I’ve ever used electronics, because I love letting those ensembles be what they are. A string quartet, for instance, is already such a perfect and self-contained sound world.
With Ringdown, of course, it’s different, that’s a completely other kind of band. I’ve also worked with recorded material in some projects, though not often with live electronics.
Usually, if I can express what I want musically using only the acoustic forces at hand, I prefer to do that. But when the piece calls for something that feels like a recorded memory, a sound that exists as a recollection or echo, then the recording itself becomes essential.
It’s interesting: I tend to keep these two worlds somewhat separate. The acoustic world feels alive and present, while the recorded one evokes memory and distance, they serve different emotional functions in the music.
Question: In works such as Partita for 8 Voices, the body and the voice are not only vehicles of performance but also compositional materials, through breathing, gesture, extended vocal techniques, and movement. When you use techniques such as breathing or physical gestures, as in this kind of work, have you developed your own personal notation system to communicate these ideas with performers? How do you translate an interpretative or physical intention into clear instructions on the score, especially for musicians who don’t come from a background in extended technique?
Caroline Shaw: That’s a really interesting question. I’ve almost consciously avoided developing my own system of notation, perhaps early on, in Partita, I tried a bit, since that was one of the first times I needed to notate things that didn’t fit easily on the staff.
I had a few symbols for exhalation, inhalation, or for the glottal break between chest and head voice, but they were mostly just cues. The real communication happened in rehearsal, through words and demonstration. That piece was never meant to be handed to many performers with a conventional background, it was created collaboratively, within a shared process of exploration.
As a performer myself, both as a violinist using extended techniques and as a singer, I often find that too much notation can become a barrier to musicality. When the page is overloaded with symbols, it takes you away from the physical and emotional flow of sound.
And I don’t really think of the techniques in Partita as “extended”, they’re just human sounds: breathing, speaking, consonants. Anyone can do them. So I’m less interested in working with performers who have studied every new notation from Berio, Lachenmann, or Sciarrino, and more with people who simply know their instrument deeply and are curious about its edges.
Question: Your collaboration with the Attacca Quartet has developed over many years, resulting in albums like Orange and Evergreen. How has this long-term relationship shaped your way of writing for strings? Do you find yourself composing differently when you know the personalities and sounds of specific players so well?
Caroline Shaw: It’s funny, I’ve worked with the Attacca Quartet so much, but I’ve actually never written a piece specifically for them. They’ve played pieces I originally wrote for other ensembles or contexts, but over time we’ve developed such a deep musical understanding. We’ve performed together a lot, and they’re very free, so I can simply say, “Could we make this feel like…” and make a gesture, and they immediately get it.
That’s what I love: I don’t have to write every detail into the score or control everything. I can trust them to bring their own sensibility to it. They’re great musicians; they feel things. That’s my favorite way of working, to create something that’s alive between us, not fixed on the page.
Even when I write for another quartet, I always think of the specific people who will play it. And one of the first things I tell any group I work with is: what’s on the page is not as important as what you want to make*.* If they feel strongly about a phrasing, a dynamic, or a color, I want them to commit to it.
It’s something I’ve learned from seventeenth-century Italian music, you know it was vibrant, colorful, full of sparkle and edge, even if the notation looks bare. The page gives you the ingredients, but not the flavor. It’s like a recipe: here’s what you need, now go and make something fabulous. I love that idea, and I carry it into everything I write.
Question: In an interview with The Mystery Review, you described your creative process as “imagining sound worlds that have never been heard before.” I found that a beautiful way of putting it. Could you tell me a bit more about what you meant by that?
Caroline Shaw: I think what I really mean is this: I want to imagine sounds that haven’t been heard before, but that have always existed. It’s a paradox. On one hand, we’ve heard everything, trillions of sounds throughout our lives. But maybe not these sounds, not in this combination.
Sometimes it’s about blending a recorded memory with something live, that mixture of presence and recollection. Or it’s about taking old chords, familiar materials, and letting them fall apart, transform, become something else.
Everything in music has been heard before, harmony, chaos, silence, but never together in quite this way, never framed like this. So what I try to do is build new frames around things I already know deeply, so that they can be heard anew. It’s like painting something that has always been there, but from a different angle.
Question: Do you also use synthesizers, in your work?
Caroline Shaw: Yes, I have a few synths here that I can use, but honestly, I often prefer working with the soft synths inside Logic. That way I can easily change or manipulate sounds later if I want to.
There are a couple of virtual synths in Logic that I really like to modify and shape. For film or pop projects, I actually find them perfectly satisfying, maybe it’s embarrassing to admit, but they sound great to me.
I do love the tactile aspect of analog synths, turning knobs, shaping sound physically, but I can’t really travel with them. So for logistical reasons, I tend to keep everything inside the computer as much as possible.
And digital synths today sound amazing. They’ve become expressive tools in their own right.
Question: People often talk about immersive concerts. What do you think about this kind of format, and what role do you think the audience plays in this context?
Caroline Shaw: I think about this a lot. I really love the idea of an immersive experience, though that can mean many different things. It could involve multimedia, screens, or lighting, but for me it’s more about rethinking the traditional separation between audience and performers, that sense of “here are the seats, here are the programs.”
Immersion isn’t necessarily about technology; it’s about awareness, of the room, the light, the sound, the atmosphere. I think we should experiment with it more, even though it can be difficult in practice.
Right now I’m writing a piece for the recital hall at the Concertgebouw, a beautiful, old space, and I’m trying to make it feel immersive without changing its architecture. I’m using tape decks and analog electronics, small gestures that make the listener aware of where they are and how sound moves through the room.
I’ve been to so-called immersive performances where people think that adding a few screens or projections makes it immersive, but I don’t think that’s true. Screens are fine, but that alone doesn’t create a deep experience. Immersion, to me, happens when everyone in the room, musicians and listeners, becomes aware of the space they share.
Question: When you compose for film, do you feel that your musical language remains consistent with your concert work, or does the presence of images transform your process in fundamental ways?
Caroline Shaw: I think there’s a harmonic language that’s always there, the same chords, the same harmonic shapes we’ve had for hundreds of years. They form part of my musical DNA, whether I’m writing concert music or film music.
But with film, the process is completely different because the form is given to you. I can’t think about structure in the same way I do for a concert piece, where I might shape a form over five or twenty minutes. In film, sometimes I have only forty seconds to create a whole emotional world.
When I’m recording everything myself, like with Fleishman Is in Trouble, I can blend electronics and acoustics in ways that aren’t really possible in my concert works, where I don’t have that level of control over the sound. In film, I can sculpt every detail, the space, the balance, the resonance, and that’s incredibly satisfying.
So I’d say my harmonic language stays the same, but the way I think about form, time, and control over sound changes entirely.
Question: When working on film scores, do you prefer being involved from the very early stages, such as script writing or pre-production, before any footage exists, or is that not essential for you?
Caroline Shaw: I would love to be involved from the very beginning of a film project someday, during the script or pre-production stage. That would be amazing.
I haven’t really had that experience yet, but it’s something I’d like to explore. I think being part of those early conversations could open up entirely new ways of thinking about how music interacts with a story.
Question: In much of your work, elements like breath or vocal resonance almost function as components of sound design. For you, where do you draw the line between musical composition and sound design? Do you see them as two distinct arts, or as parts of a single creative continuum?
Caroline Shaw: Ideally, I see them as part of a single continuum. I would actually love to work on a film where I could also do all the sound design myself. Of course, there are technical aspects to it, things like frequency balance, timbre, low tones, but to me, it’s all music. It’s all connected.
I’ve had discussions with directors and producers about using the voice or breath in film as part of the score. The challenge is making sure it doesn’t confuse the listener, distinguishing between dialogue, singing, or atmospheric sound. I’ve been involved in a few projects where the original idea was that music and sound design would be completely integrated, one unified texture. But logistically, productions often make that separation unavoidable.
Maybe one day I’ll find the right project for that. Because in the end, I think composer and sound designer could, and perhaps should, become one.
Question: If you compare the great film music tradition of the last century with today’s landscape, what do you see as the most significant changes in the role and function of music for images?
Caroline Shaw: In the twentieth century there were so many extraordinary orchestral scores, the language was incredibly rich and deep. Today, I feel that has flattened a bit. Sometimes it feels like people just layer on an orchestral texture, a kind of Strauss or John Williams sound, without really listening beneath the surface.
There’s also much less emphasis on melody or thematic writing. I don’t necessarily miss that, I’m not nostalgic for it, but I do think there’s a tendency now to rely on atmosphere alone, like a simple low drone, and call that enough. At the same time, there are wonderful exceptions: scores that are highly detailed, where voice and vocals play a greater role, and where acoustic and electronic sounds blend in fascinating ways. I love that development.
I’m not sad that we don’t sound like John Williams anymore, I think that’s a good thing. But sometimes I watch films where it feels as if someone just wrote “big orchestra” in the script and the result becomes generic.
What excites me most is when I hear a score that feels truly intentional, clear, distinctive, and character-driven. The best film music has its own presence, like an actor with a strong sense of identity, rather than something that merely fills the background.
Question: Could you tell me a bit more about the score for Fleishman Is in Trouble?
Caroline Shaw: I loved making that score because I got to record everything myself, all the vocals, strings, piano, and electronics. It gave me the chance to really control the blend of all those sounds. It’s nice not to have to write everything down for other people or plan a recording session; I could simply experiment and sculpt the sound directly.
I especially enjoyed blending the electronics with the voice, the pulsing of the synths, the shaping of reverb and delay, the timing of starts and stops. Those details become musical gestures in themselves.
I also love thinking about what harmony can reveal about a character. In that series, the characters are all a bit awful, but there’s something underneath, a fragility, a reason for their flaws. Music can express that duality: empathy and harshness at the same time.
As much as I loved creating the Leonardo soundtrack, which was more traditional, Fleishman Is in Trouble was one of my favorite experiences. It feels modern and old at once, a combination I find deeply moving.
Question: Today, music is often streamed in short, fragmented ways and shaped by algorithms. In this landscape, how do you think a composer can still make their voice stand out?
Caroline Shaw: I always think about how people usually hear just the first eight seconds of something, and that’s enough for them to decide. It’s such a strange reality. But I still believe in making music for live performance, for that kind of attention where you can’t turn it off or skip ahead. You’re simply there, present, immersed for an hour. That experience is becoming rare and precious.
I think what helps an artist stand out today is a deep sense of form. Anyone, even AI, can make a “cool sound” for five seconds. But to create something that sustains attention, that keeps you inside it for three, five, or ten minutes, that’s different. That’s where the real artistry lies.
And I still believe there’s something magical about music. There are moments when you find a sound or a chord progression and you just feel it, it moves you. That’s the chemistry we’re all chasing. You have to move yourself first before you can expect anyone else to be moved.
I try not to think too much about algorithms or how to stand out on TikTok. I read an article recently about a singer who accidentally created a viral phenomenon just by labeling her videos as “Group 1,” “Group 2,” and so on, it became absurdly popular overnight.
But to me, what really matters is honesty. If the music feels true, thoughtful, and deeply felt, it will resonate with someone. There’s still magic in sound, in exploring, listening, discovering something you’ve never heard before. And if it moves you, chances are it will move someone else too.
Question: There is a lot of discussion about artificial intelligence in the artistic community right now. Do you have any thoughts about it?
Caroline Shaw: I’m sure that in the near future AI will create something I find really beautiful, and that’s fine. It hasn’t happened yet, at least not for me, but I know it will.
I do think human imperfection is magical and beautiful. I hope artists continue to grow, to make mistakes, to ask questions, that’s what keeps creativity alive. Using AI doesn’t necessarily prevent that; it just depends on how we use it. You can still approach it with curiosity, with awareness, and with the same human sensitivity that drives any artistic act.
I don’t use AI myself, but I’m not against it. I just think that whatever tools we use, the essential thing is to stay human, to keep listening, wondering, and reaching for something real.
Question: And about the professional landscape for composers today, what do you feel is missing, and what change would you like to see in the future?
Caroline Shaw: My dream for the future is that people still go out to experience things in person, concerts, plays, films, immersive performances, and that we don’t end up living entirely inside our screens. There’s something so essential about being physically present, both as a listener and as a performer. As composers, being vulnerable in front of people teaches us something profound about communication and connection.
Of course, you can share that vulnerability online too, but the live space has a fragility and immediacy that I think is irreplaceable.
In many ways, though, I think this is a wonderful time to be a composer. Compared to thirty years ago, we have so many tools and possibilities, software, computers, the ability to record and create entire worlds from home without needing huge resources. It’s incredibly liberating.
I keep returning to live performance because it feels fragile right now, people don’t even go to the cinema as much anymore, and I worry about that. But for creators, this moment feels a bit like what Monteverdi must have felt in seventeenth-century Venice: *"*Oh my God, I can have brass instruments, choirs, and sound everywhere!" It’s so colorful, so full of possibility.
So yes, the landscape for composers today is amazing in terms of creation, maybe more difficult in terms of getting people’s attention. But that’s just part of the ongoing work.
Acknowledgements
I warmly thank Caroline Shaw for generously sharing her time, reflections, and creative process. Her openness has been essential in shaping this conversation within The Sonic Atelier - Conversations with Contemporary Composers and Producers.
By Francesca Guccione