Gabriel Kahane | Caroline Shaw

Caroline Shaw and I began working together in 2011, when she was a member of ACME and played several gigs as a violinist on shows of mine. But it’s been primarily in the last few years that our musical relationship has deepened. Caroline’s love of, and respect for, the classical tradition, and in particular the string quartet from Haydn, forward, is indelibly etched in her own music, which draws liberally from the repertoire, while making it utterly her own. Like me, she’s a singer. I’ve learned from Caroline to embrace (further) the side of myself that is emotionally direct. That quality is, perhaps, what I admire most in Caroline: she is always herself in everything she writes. Caro and I plan to organize our collaborative piece around Jorge Luis Borges’ 1939 short story, “The Library of Babel,” a text which has long fascinated both of us. We will also, I think, investigate our respective relationships to our (singing) voices, perhaps writing for each other in the context of this piece. I imagine we will also dip into the repertoire, finding ways to shift from piano and violin repertoire to, say, songs for the two of us accompanied by OP-1 synthesizers or violin loops. Making those sound worlds elide will be the pleasure and challenge of this project.

—Gabriel Kahane, August 2022