Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part Caroline Shaw & Sō Percussion SKU: 0075597915914 Barcode: 0075597915914 18.00 £18.00 Genre: Classical Label: Nonesuch Released Date: 25th June 2021 Buying Format: 1LP Coloured Vinyl Out of stock Back Order Add to your Wishlist Description Product Info ‘The four songs heard [in a 2020 concert] are… infectious and inviting, but by no means facile… Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part is planned for release this year. Grammy nominators, take note.’ – New York Times Nonesuch Records releases an album of songs written and performed by Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion, Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part. The musicians, who have known each other since their student days, were presented with three days of gratis studio time and decided to experiment with ideas they had begun putting to tape during the sessions for their January 2021 Nonesuch release Narrow Sea. With Shaw on vocals and Sō – Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting – filling out this new band, they developed songs in the studio, with lyrics inspired by their own wide-ranging interests: James Joyce, the Sacred Harp hymn book, a poem by Anne Carson, the Bible’s Book of Ruth, the American roots tune ‘I’ll Fly Away’, and the pop perfection of ABBA, among others. The album is co-produced by Shaw, Sō Percussion, and the Grammy Award–winning engineer Jonathan Low (The National, Taylor Swift). Shaw, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her vocal composition Partita for 8 Voices, written for and performed with Roomful of Teeth, makes her solo vocal debut with Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part. The album’s first track, ‘To the Sky’, from the Sacred Harp, takes its lyrics from Anne Steele. “I love the songs about death, and going home, and looking toward a time that is better or brighter, which, if there’s one thing to think about in the world, maybe that’s the thing,” Shaw says. “This one I love in particular. There’s a line, ‘Frail solace of an hour / So soon our transient comforts fly / And pleasure blooms to die.’ It’s meditation on the ephemeral, and I love it.” “I hadn’t written very many songs, but I have certainly loved many in my life. I’ve been thinking of making a solo album for seven or eight years, but it takes having the right friends and community in the room,” Shaw says. “The prompt for all of us was: What would we make in the room together with no one person in charge, like a band writes in the studio?” Cha-Beach recalls of the early test run during the Narrow Sea session: “It had that capturing-lightning-in-a bottle feeling.” When the opportunity to have three days in their friends’ studio, Guilford Sound, came up, the five musicians decamped for Vermont with engineer/co-producer Jonathan Low. “Jon is an amazing editor,” Cha-Beach says. “He is so helpful in thinking about: ‘We have these ideas: how do we shrink those and make them come across on an album?’” One such idea was for Shaw to do a duet with each member of Sō. She sings with Josh Quillen on steel drums on the title track, which she wrote in under an hour in a “free-writing zone, very inspired by James Joyce, taking on that brain space,” she says. Lyrically, the song is “related to some math bits that I love, but also memory, and love songs of somebody who’s gone or passed away, or that you’re no longer with: what is the sound of that kind of devastation or confusion or love?” They recorded the song only twice, and the first take is on the album. “It’s very spare. The playing is very Josh; it’s so sensitive,” Shaw says. Adam Sliwinski’s marimba duet with Shaw is an interpretation of the ABBA song ‘Lay All Your Love On Me’. She explains, “It’s really a Bach chorale. Also, the idea of someone singing ‘Don’t go wasting your emotion / Lay all your love on me / Don’t go sharing your devotion / Lay all your love on me,’ over and over again very slowly, there’s a certain tragedy in it. And then Adam did some absolutely exquisite layering that built this stunning world from the marimba.” Jason Treuting on the drum kit joined Shaw for ‘Long Ago We Counted’. She suggested, “Why don’t we start with the voice and the kit having a weird conversation, sort of like two babies talking to each other? And then we built this loop, and we go from this place that’s totally uncomfortable and nonsensical to something that’s rich and rolling and satisfying.” For ‘Some Bright Morning’, the duet with Cha-Beach – who here plays electronics, piano, and Hammond organ – Shaw drew upon a twelfth century liturgical hymn she had sung regularly in church during her college years: ‘Salve Regina’. “Some songs on Let the Soil… were very specifically composed by Caroline,” Cha-Beach says. “But others were this assemblage of ideas: finding words, an idea for how a melody could work, a harmony, and then tossing it in a blender and trusting each other.” Shaw adds, “What I love about Sō is the curiosity about how objects make sounds and how they speak to each other. [There was an] underlying thread of thinking about what goes into soil, how we take care of it, how we allow it to be itself, how we contain it, and what can come out of it if you cultivate the right environment, which for me is always this wonderful metaphor for creativity and collaboration: let people be themselves and see what happens,” she concludes. Caroline Shaw is a New York–based musician – vocalist, violinist, composer, and producer – who performs in solo and collaborative projects. She was the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 for Partita for 8 Voices, written for the Grammy–winning Roomful of Teeth, of which she is a member. Shaw’s film scores include Erica Fae’s To Keep the Light and Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline as well as the upcoming short 8th Year of the Emergency by Maureen Towey. Hailed for ‘astonishing both the pop and classical music worlds’ (Guardian), she has produced for Kanye West (The Life of Pablo; Ye) and Nas (NASIR), and has contributed to records by The National and by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry. Shaw currently teaches at NYU and is a Creative Associate at The Juilliard School. Her 2019 Nonesuch/New Amsterdam album Orange won a Grammy Award. Through its interpretations of modern classics, innovative multi-genre original productions, and ‘exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam’ (New Yorker), Sō Percussion has redefined the scope and role of the modern percussion ensemble. Sō’s repertoire ranges from twentieth century works by John Cage, Steve Reich, and Iannis Xenakis, to commissioning and advocating works by contemporary composers such as David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Steven Mackey, to collaborations with artists who work outside the classical concert hall, including Shara Nova, choreographer Susan Marshall, The National, Bryce Dessner, and many others. Sō has recorded more than twenty albums, including a performance of Reich’s Mallet Quartet on the Nonesuch record WTC 9/11; appeared at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Walt Disney Hall, the Barbican, the Eaux Claires Festival, MassMoCA, and TED 2016; and performed with Jad Abumrad, JACK Quartet, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, and the LA Phil and Gustavo Dudamel, among others. Artist Caroline Shaw & Sō Percussion Genre Classical Label Nonesuch Buying Options 1LP Coloured Vinyl Format 1LP , Coloured Vinyl Condition New Country UK Track Listings To the Sky Other Song Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part The Flood Is Following Me Lay All Your Love On Me Cast the Bells in Sand Long Ago We Counted A Gradual Dazzle A Veil Awave Upon the Waves Some Bright Morning Share this On Facebook On Twitter Via Email More from Caroline Shaw & Sō Percussion and more from Classical View Product Quick View Caroline Shaw & Sō Percussion Rectangles and Circumstance Classical | Nonesuch | 1LP Released 14th June 2024 £28.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Caroline Shaw & Sō Percussion Rectangles and Circumstance £28.00 Genre: Classical Label: Nonesuch SKU: 0075597899535 Formats: 1LP Released Date: 14th June 2024 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View Víkingur Ólafsson Continnum Classical | Decca | 1LP, Coloured Vinyl Released 18th October 2024 £30.00 - £36.00 Select options Víkingur Ólafsson Continnum £30.00 - £36.00 Genre: Classical Label: Decca Formats: 1LP, Coloured Vinyl Released Date: 18th October 2024 Read More Select options View Product Quick View Sebastian Plano Verve Classical | Mercury KX | 1LP Released 1st March 2019 £20.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Sebastian Plano Verve £20.00 Genre: Classical Label: Mercury KX SKU: 6722837 Formats: 1LP Released Date: 1st March 2019 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View Samson François Debussy: Pour le piano Classical | Erato | 180g, 1LP Released 18th August 2017 £19.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Samson François Debussy: Pour le piano £19.00 Genre: Classical Label: Erato SKU: 0190295801779 Formats: 180g, 1LP Released Date: 18th August 2017 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View John Williams & Saito Kinen Orchestra John Williams in Tokyo Classical | Decca (UMO) / Classics / Deutsche Grammophon | 2LP Released 12th July 2024 £36.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders John Williams & Saito Kinen Orchestra John Williams in Tokyo £36.00 Genre: Classical Label: Decca (UMO) / Classics / Deutsche Grammophon SKU: 6511210 Formats: 2LP Released Date: 12th July 2024 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View Jan Liseicki Chopin Etudes Classical | Deutsche Grammophon | 2LP Released 19th May 2023 £30.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Jan Liseicki Chopin Etudes £30.00 Genre: Classical Label: Deutsche Grammophon SKU: 4863972 Formats: 2LP Released Date: 19th May 2023 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View Max Richter In A Landscape Classical | Decca (UMO) (Classics) [GB] | Classics | Decca Records | 2LP, Coloured Vinyl Released 6th September 2024 £35.00 Select options Reserve View Reservations Max Richter In A Landscape £35.00 Genre: Classical Label: Decca (UMO) (Classics) [GB] | Classics | Decca Records Formats: 2LP, Coloured Vinyl Released Date: 6th September 2024 Reserve View Reservations Read More Select options View Product Quick View Brahms/Fritz Reiner/Chicago Symphony/Jascha Heifetz, violin Violin Concerto Classical | Analogue Productions | 180g, 1LP Released 9th December 2015 £45.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Brahms/Fritz Reiner/Chicago Symphony/Jascha Heifetz, violin Violin Concerto £45.00 Genre: Classical Label: Analogue Productions SKU: AAPC1903 Formats: 180g, 1LP Released Date: 9th December 2015 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View Michael Rabin / Sir Adrian Boult / Philharmonia Mendelssohn / Ravel – Violin Concerto Classical | Testament | 180g, 1LP Released 8th July 2016 £21.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Michael Rabin / Sir Adrian Boult / Philharmonia Mendelssohn / Ravel – Violin Concerto £21.00 Genre: Classical Label: Testament SKU: 33CX1597 Formats: 180g, 1LP Released Date: 8th July 2016 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View Sir Georg Solti The Golden Ring: Great Scenes From Wagner’s Der Ring Des Nibelungen Classical | Decca | SACD Released 28th October 2022 £20.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Sir Georg Solti The Golden Ring: Great Scenes From Wagner’s Der Ring Des Nibelungen £20.00 Genre: Classical Label: Decca SKU: 4853364 Formats: SACD Released Date: 28th October 2022 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View Nils Frahm Encores 3 Classical | Erased Tapes | 1LP Released 20th September 2019 £14.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Nils Frahm Encores 3 £14.00 Genre: Classical Label: Erased Tapes SKU: ERATP125LP Formats: 1LP Released Date: 20th September 2019 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders See more in Classical Start again
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