Caroline Shaw & Sō Percussion featuring Ringdown

Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She works often in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist. Shaw is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music, an honorary doctorate from Yale, four Grammys, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She has written and produced for iconic artists and ensembles across the musical spectrum, including Rosalía, Renée Fleming, Yo-Yo Ma, Tiler Peck, Nas, Kanye West, the LA Phil, the NY Phil, and others. Recent tv/film/stage scoring projects include “Leonardo Da Vinci” (Ken Burns/PBS), “Julie Keeps Quiet (Leonardo Van Dijl), “Fleishman is in Trouble” (FX/Hulu), “The Sky Is Everywhere” (Josephine Decker/A24), vocal work with Rosalía (MOTOMAMI), “The Crucible” (Lyndsey Turner/National Theatre), “Partita” (Justin Peck/NYC Ballet), “Moby Dick” (Wu Tsang), and “LIFE” (Gandini Juggling/Merce Cunningham Trust). Current touring projects include shows with Sō Percussion, Ringdown, Attacca Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, Graveyards & Gardens, Gabriel Kahane, and Kamus Quartet. Her favorite color is yellow, and her favorite smell is rosemary.

For 25 years, Grammy-winning percussion quartet Sō Percussion has redefined chamber music for the 21st century through an “exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam” (The New Yorker). They are celebrated by audiences and presenters for a dazzling range of work: for live performances in which “telepathic powers of communication” (The New York Times) bring to life the vibrant percussion repertoire; for an extravagant array of collaborations in classical music, pop, indie rock, contemporary dance, and theater; and for their work in education and community, creating opportunities and platforms for music and artists that explore the immense possibility of art in our time. Their commitment to the creation and amplification of new work, and their extraordinary powers of perception and communication have made them a trusted partner for composers, allowing the writing of music that expands the style and capacity of brilliant voices of our time. Sō’s collaborative composition partners include David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Nathalie Joachim, Dan Trueman, Kendall K. Williams, Angélica Negrón, Shodekeh Talifero, claire rousay, Leilehua Lanzilotti, Bora Yoon, Olivier Tarpaga, Bobby Previte, Matmos, and many others.

Sō Percussion’s 2024-2025 season is supported in part by awards from:

• The National Endowment for the Arts.  To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov
• 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
• The Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation

Sō Percussion uses:
Pearl/Adams Instruments
Vic Firth Drumsticks and Mallets
Zildjian Cymbals
Blackswamp Accessories
Remo Drumheads
Estey Organs
Kyle Dunleavy Steel Pans 
MalletMan Steel Drum Mallets

Sō Percussion would like to thank these companies for their generous support and donations.

Ringdown – featuring composer-musicians Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee Parpan – is an
“ecstatically blissful” (Night After Night) and “irresistible” (Feast of Music) cinematic electro-pop duo creating music that floats up from the dusty record bin between Brahms and Brandi Carlile, and centers around joy, human connection, and trying to inspire people to feel more love (and maybe even reach out to a crush).

The duo was drawn to each other through mutual admiration of each other’s work; Shaw has
won a Pulitzer Prize and several Grammy Awards for her boundary-breaking compositions and contributed music to films including Beyoncé’s Homecoming and the upcoming Ken Burns documentary Leonardo da Vinci, and Parpan is a dynamic vocalist and folk-pop singer-songwriter who writes emotionally stirring lyrics and relishes in challenging how instruments are “supposed” to be played. Together as Ringdown, they forge a new realm that
unlocks ways to write, sing, and perform that they can only access with each other, encouraging each to loosen their grip on the music they have created before and fully revel in the intricate pop music they have both always loved. Their songs are built on late nights of countless back-and-forths on tables covered in instruments and wires, sonically merging Shaw’s pull toward the abstract with Parpan’s directness, perhaps with a playlist of Sylvan Esso, Glasser, Robyn, James Blake, and The Blow in the background. The result is music that invites deep listening but also welcomes you to sing along, and – they hope – helps people feel everything they have been too afraid to feel.

As for the band’s name: A ringdown is the theorized sound two black holes make in the final
microseconds when they merge, a sub-bass whoosh and glide that suggest the world’s biggest synthesizer, sighing in contentment. This might also describe how Ringdown’s music sounds. Or at least how it feels to the band.

Ringdown is working on a debut album for Nonesuch Records and has performed across the
U.S. and abroad at Big Ears, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Public Records, SXSW, Thuringia
Bach Festival, and more. The duo, who are partners on and off the stage, split their time
between Portland, OR and New York, NY. Learn more at ringdownmusic.com and follow them on what they are proud to share is “their friend Virginia’s favorite Instagram account” at
@ringdownmusic.