Caroline Shaw
Brush

Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Caroline Shaw’s Brush will offer a magical confluence of sound and nature on the Aspen Music Festival and School’s Meadows Campus. This outdoor, site-specific work is a one-mile musical walk featuring ten stations nestled among the Aspen trees, each showcasing a different grouping of instruments. Audience members are invited to explore the route at their own pace, lingering as long as they wish at each station before the experience culminates in the Klein Music Tent. There, AMFS alumnus Teddy Abrams will conduct an orchestra performing a work that weaves together the musical themes encountered along the journey.

Shaw joins the AMFS for the 2026 Summer Season as Principal Guest Composer. In addition to mentoring composition students, leading master classes, and engaging with the AMFS community, Shaw’s works will be featured on three Festival programs.

About the Aspen Music Festival and School’s 2026 Summer Season
The Aspen Music Festival and School celebrates 77 years of performance and mentorship this summer, when more than 450 young artists from around the world come together, with artist-faculty and guests from the foremost orchestras and music schools nationwide, for almost 200 public events. Titled “For All” in a nod to the closing words of the Pledge of Allegiance, the 2026 Festival commemorates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In celebration of this historic milestone, the season’s repertoire will include classic and contemporary works by American composers, as well as significant works celebrating the contributions of visitors and new arrivals from all over the world to the American sound, and an Aspen signature mix of both much loved and rarely performed works from the full breadth of the classical repertoire. As in previous seasons, these events will be presented over eight weeks in Aspen’s spectacular mountain setting (July 1–Aug 23). More at aspenmusicfestival.com.

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 often works 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. Recent 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 Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (dir. Lyndsey Turner), Justin Peck’s Partita with New York City Ballet, the premiere of “Microfictions, Vol. 3” for the New York Philharmonic and Roomful of Teeth, a live orchestral score for Wu Tsang’s silent film MOBY DICK; or, The Whale co-composed with Andrew Yee, two albums on Nonesuch (Evergreen and The Blue Hour), and tours with Sō Percussion featuring songs from Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part (Nonesuch). She has contributed production to albums by Rosalía, Woodkid, and Nas.

The performance is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.