Who Turns Out the Light: Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion featuring Ringdown

Sō Percussion and Caroline Shaw’s latest collaboration is “Rectangles and Circumstance,” the “hypnotically beautiful” (BBC Radio 3) new album from Nonesuch Records. The current tour of the album is augmented by songs from their previous collaborative work “Let the Soil Play its Simple Part” as well as an interlude from Caroline’s cinematic pop duo Ringdown, featuring co-songwriter and partner Danni Lee, plus recent compositions for Sō by members Jason Treuting and Eric Cha-Beach. The evening-length performance is a band-generated theatrical experience, featuring staging and design by director Mark DeChiazza. The musicians gradually place lights and reveal novel instruments as the show builds from a lone spotlight on Shaw singing “I’ll Fly Away” to the ecstatic full ensemble performing thrilling up-tempo songs like “Sing On” and “To the Sky,” as films by Sō Percussion member Jason Treuting splash across canvases throughout the stage. This production melds DIY design with dazzling original songs, to sensational effect.

So Percussion: Who Turns Out the Light Program

For twenty years and counting, Sō Percussion has redefined chamber music for the 21st century through an “exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam” (The New Yorker).

Sō’s 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 Caroline Shaw, 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.

The current season hears Sō and Caroline Shaw perform a program highlighting their newest album, Rectangles and Circumstance,  at the Barbican in London, the BOZAR in Brussels, Saffron Hall in Essex, and at 92NY in New York City. Recent Sō  highlights have included performances at Carnegie Hall, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Big Ears, Cal Performances, at the Palau de la Musica Catalana in Barcelona, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Penn Live Arts in Philadelphia, the Hancher Auditorium at the University of Iowa, the Oklahoma Philharmonic, the Library of Congress, touring Benin and Burkina Faso with Olivier Tarpaga, and more.

In addition to Rectangles and Circumstances, their recent albums with Caroline Shaw include Let the Soil Play its Simple Part; and the Grammy-award winning Narrow Sea with Dawn Upshaw and Gilbert Kalish, all on Nonesuch Records.  Other recent albums include an acclaimed version of Julius Eastman’s Stay On It,  and Darian Donovan Thomas’s Individuate. This adds to a catalog of more than twenty-five albums featuring landmark recordings of works by Steve Reich, Steven Mackey, David Lang, and many others.

In Fall 2024, Sō Percussion began its eleventh year as the Edward T. Cone performers-in-residence at Princeton University. Rooted in the belief that music is an elemental form of human communication, and galvanized by forces for social change, Sō enthusiastically pursues a range of social and community outreach through their nonprofit umbrella, including partnerships with local ensembles including Brooklyn’s Pan in Motion; their Sō Laboratories concert series; a studio residency program in Brooklyn; fundraising for the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen; and the Sō Percussion Summer Institute, an intensive two-week chamber music seminar for percussionists and composers.

Sō is: Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting.

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. Caroline is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several Grammy awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. This year’s projects include the score to “Fleishman is in Trouble” (FX/Hulu), vocal work with Rosalía(MOTOMAMI), the score to Josephine Decker’s “The Sky Is Everywhere” (A24/Apple), music for the National Theatre’s production of “The Crucible” (dir. Lyndsey Turner), Justin Peck’s “Partita” with NY City Ballet, a new stage work “LIFE” (Gandini Juggling/Merce Cunningham Trust), the premiere of “Microfictions Vol. 3” for NY Philharmonic and Roomful of Teeth, a live orchestral score for Wu Tsang’s silent film “Moby Dick” co-composed with Andrew Yee, two albums on Nonesuch (“Evergreen” and “The Blue Hour”), the score for Helen Simoneau’s dance work “Delicate Power”, tours of Graveyards & Gardens (co-created immersive theatrical work with Vanessa Goodman), and tours with So Percussion featuring songs from “Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part” (Nonesuch), amid occasional chamber music appearances as violist (Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, La Jolla Music Society). Caroline has written over 100 works in the last decade, for Anne Sofie von Otter, Davóne Tines, Yo Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, LA Phil, Philharmonia Baroque, Seattle Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, AizuriQuartet, The Crossing, Dover Quartet, Calidore Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, Miro Quartet, I Giardini, Ars Nova Copenhagen, Ariadne Greif, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Britt Festival, and the Vail Dance Festival. She has contributed production to albums by Rosalía, Woodkid, and Nas. Her work as vocalist or composer has appeared in several films, tv series, and podcasts including The Humans, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, Beyonce’s Homecoming, Tár, Dolly Parton’s America, and More Perfect. Her favorite color is yellow, and her favorite smell is rosemary.

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.