UW Faculty Concert: Carrie Shaw | The Weight of Sweetness: Songs for All the Senses

• Carrie Henneman Shaw, soprano
• Bonnie Whiting, percussion
• Cristina Valdés, piano
• Andrew Romanick, piano & vocorder

Juliana Hall — Songs of Enchantment
Kate Soper — Lady Reason Suite from The Romance of the Rose
Yiheng Yvonne Wu — Four Poems of Li-Young Lee
Christopher Trapani — the color of where you can never go (world premiere)

Selected from 689 applicants from 44 countries, composer Chris Trapani was awarded the Barlow commission for a new song cycle to be premiered by an elite quartet of sopranos, including UW's own Carrie Shaw. Hear the premiere of this major contribution to American art song, alongside works by living composers from around the world in her program "The Weight of Sweetness: Songs for All the Senses." Shaw is joined onstage by faculty colleagues Bonnie Whiting, percussion; Cristina Valdés, piano; and Andrew Romanick, piano and vocoder.

About UW School of Music

http://music.washington.edu/

About Carrie Henneman Shaw, soprano

Carrie Henneman Shaw joined the Voice Program at the University of Washington as an artist in residence in Autumn 2020. As a singer, Carrie engages in a wide variety of musical projects, but she focuses on early and contemporary music.

A sample of her work includes an upcoming solo recording on Naxos Records of early 18th-century French song; creating music for a live-music-for-dance project with James Sewell Ballet; and collaborating on a recording with the band Deerhoof. Carrie is a two-time winner of a McKnight Fellowship for Performing Musicians, and she is a member of two groups that focus on music by living composers, Ensemble Dal Niente, a mixed chamber collective, and Quince Ensemble, a treble voice quartet.

She appears in numerous recordings ranging from medieval sacred music to a video-game soundtrack, and before coming to the UW, she has been maintaining a full university studio for the six years and participating in educational residencies for composers and performers around the country, including UC-Berkeley, Stanford, New York University, the University of Chicago, and beyond.

http://www.shawsoprano.com/

About Bonnie Whiting, percussion

Bonnie Whiting (she/her) performs, improvises, and composes new music for percussion. Exploring intersections of storytelling and experimental music, her work is often cross-disciplinary, integrating text, music, movement, and technology. Her debut album, featuring a solo-simultaneous realization of John Cage's 45' for a speaker and 27’10.554 for a percussionist was released by Mode Records in 2017, and her second album, Perishable Structures, launched on the New Focus Recordings label in 2020. Whiting is a core member of the Seattle Modern Orchestra and she has performed with the country’s leading new music groups: Ensemble Dal Niente, International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, and red fish blue fish percussion group. Bonnie uses Innovative Percussion sticks and mallets, and she is Chair of Percussion Studies and the Ruth Sutton Waters Associate Professor of Music at the University of Washington.

http://www.bonniewhitingpercussion.com

About Cristina Valdés, piano

https://music.washington.edu/people/cristina-valdes

About Andrew Romanick, piano & vocorder

http://andrewromanick.com/