Composer, Singer Caroline Shaw Wins 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music

Caroline Shaw, a graduate student in composition in the Department of Music at Princeton University and a New York-based musician, has won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for music for “Partita for 8 Voices.”

In its award citation, the Pulitzer Prize Board calls the work “a highly polished and inventive a cappella work uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects.”

Shaw is a member of Roomful of Teeth, a vocal quartet for whom she wrote the “Partita.” The work was released on the group’s eponymous album on October 30, 2012, by New Amsterdam Records.

The Pulitzer Prize for music recognizes a distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year.

Listen to a recent NPR interview with Shaw here.