Caroline Shaw is not only the youngest composer ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music, which she received for her a cappella vocal work Partita for 8 Voices, she is also a talented violinist and a Grammy-winning singer in Roomful of Teeth, the ensemble for which Partita for 8 Voices was written.
On her Entr’acte Caroline writes:
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, technicolour transition.
It was first performed by the Brentano Quartet at Princeton University in April 2011, and this string orchestra version was commissioned by A Far Cry in July 2014.
Programme Note © Amy Campbell
