Caroline Shaw
Angélica Negrón
Raquel Acevedo Klein

Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón writes music for accordions, robotic instruments, toys, and electronics, as well as for chamber ensembles, orchestras, choir, and film. Her music has been described as “wistfully idiosyncratic and contemplative” (WQXR/Q2) while The New York Times has noted her “capacity to surprise.”  

Negrón has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Kronos Quartet, loadbang, Prototype Festival, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Sō Percussion, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Opera Philadelphia, and the New York Botanical Garden, among others. She has collaborated with Sō Percussion, Lido Pimienta, Mathew Placek, Sasha Velour, Cecilia Aldarondo, Mariela Pabón, Adrienne Westwood, and Tiffany Mills, and she has written music for films, theater, and modern dance. 

She received an early education in piano and violin at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, where she later studied composition under the guidance of composer Alfonso Fuentes. She holds a Master’s degree in music composition from New York University, where she studied with Pedro da Silva, and she pursued her doctoral studies at The Graduate Center (CUNY), where she studied composition with Tania León.  

Also active as an educator, Negrón is currently a teaching artist for New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers program. She was recently an Artist-in-Residence at WNYC’s The Greene Space working on El Living Room, a four-part offbeat variety show and playful multimedia exploration of sound and story, personal history, and belonging. Upcoming premieres include works for the Seattle Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Louisville Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic’s Project 19 initiative, as well as multiple performances at Big Ears Festival 2022. 

To learn more about Angélica Negrón, please visit her website.

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 is the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music, for Partita for 8 Voices (Roomful of Teeth), and she works often in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist. She received a 2022 Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition for her work Narrow Sea.

Shaw’s 2022 season will see the release of Shaw’s work with Rosalía (on upcoming album MOTOMAMI); the score to Josephine Decker’s film The Sky Is Everywhere (A24/Apple); the premiere of Justin Peck’s Partita with the New York City Ballet; the premiere of the new stage work LIFE with Gandini Juggling and the Merce Cunningham Trust; a premiere for the New York Philharmonic and Roomful of Teeth; the premiere of Wu Tsang’s silent film Moby Dick with live score for Zurich Chamber Orchestra co-composed with Andrew Yee; a second album with Attacca Quartet called The Evergreen (Nonesuch); the premiere of Helen Simoneau’s Delicate Power; tours of Graveyards & Gardens (immersive dance theater work co-created with Vanessa Goodman); and tours with Sō Percussion featuring songs from Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part (Nonesuch).

Shaw has written over 100 works in the last decade, for Anne Sofie von Otter, Davóne Tines, Yo Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonia Baroque, Seattle Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Aizuri Quartet, The Crossing, Dover Quartet, Calidore Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, Miro Quartet, I Giardini, Ars Nova Copenhagen, Ariadne Greif, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Britt Festival, Vail Dance Festival, and many others. She has produced for Kanye West, Rosalía, Woodkid, and Nas. Her work as vocalist or composer has appeared in several films, television series, and podcasts, including The Humans, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, Beyonce’s Homecoming, jeen-yuhs: a Kanye Trilogy, Dolly Parton’s America, and More Perfect. (CS 2022) 

To learn more about Caroline Shaw, please visit her website. 

Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Raquel Acevedo Klein is an active conductor, vocalist, composer, and instrumentalist. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, Town Hall, BAM, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Celebrate Brooklyn!, the Guggenheim, Rockefeller Center, on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, WNYC, National Sawdust, and elsewhere. 

Klein conducts the Grammy Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, among other projects. She has premiered works and operas by Philip Glass, Caroline Shaw, John Adams, Nico Muhly, Paola Prestini, Bryce Dessner, and George Lewis, to name a few. She has recorded and performed with artists including Glen Hansard, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, The National, Grizzly Bear, Cory Smythe, Sufjan Stevens, and the New York Philharmonic, among others.  

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, Klein launched MUSIC on the REBOUND, an online festival designed to bring people together through world-wide singing events, in partnership with Claire Chase, Ione Oliveros, International Contemporary Ensemble, and American Composers Orchestra. The festival has since been inducted into the Library of Congress. As part of NY PopsUp, she curated the four-week festival entitled NYC FREE, to celebrate the opening of Little Island in 2021. Her performances and curations have caught the attention of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, and Time Out New York. 

To learn more about Raquel Acevedo Klein, please visit her website.