MUSIC | ALBUQUERQUE
Pulitzer- and Grammy-winning musicians to perform eclectic concert at Albuquerque Academy
Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion perform ‘Who Turns Out the Light’ on June 21
Acclaimed composer and vocalist Caroline Shaw and the Sō Percussion ensemble won a 2025 Grammy Award for “Rectangles and Circumstance,” a genre-defying album that blended classical, pop and experimental electronic music. On Sunday, June 21, they will perform together at Albuquerque Academy’s Simms Center in a new multimedia theatrical experience, “Who Turns Out the Light.”
“We come out of a tradition where we play not only the orchestral instruments or rock instruments people are used to seeing, but we do something that’s called ‘found sounds,’ which is where you take ordinary objects and make them musical,” Adam Sliwinski, Sō Percussion’s co-artistic director, said.
Along with drums and marimbas, Sō’s instruments include flower pots and metal pipes.
“With flower pots, you just tap on them, like anybody could do. But we select flower pots that have just the right pitch and tones for the piece,” Sliwinski said. “We have a piece in the middle of the show for tuned metal pipes that Eric Cha-Beach from our group wrote, and those are just normal pipes that we get at Home Depot, but we tune them to the right size, so that they have the pitches we want, and then we play rhythms on them. … It’s similar to ‘Stomp’ (the Broadway show), except we don’t do backflips.”
They may not do backflips, but, like “Stomp,” “Who Turns Out the Light” incorporates choreographed movement and lighting. Director Mark DeChiazza said he wanted to achieve “magical” effects using lo-fi, hands-on techniques suited to the group’s do-it-yourself aesthetic.
“The whole machinery of the set and the lighting is managed and operated by the group,” DeChiazza said. “What’s wonderful is that the transformation of the visual world of the set, in terms of how it gets transformed through lighting, moving lights, switching lights on and off … is not something that happens externally, that’s put on them. … They’re actively making, remaking and changing their space … and part of the charm of the show is watching them do that.”
Sliwinski and DeChiazza said they took inspiration from the rock band Talking Heads’ 1983 “Speaking in Tongues” tour — as immortalized in the Jonathan Demme concert film, “Stop Making Sense” — where lights and projectors functioned as instruments in their own right.
The original members of Sō Percussion met at Yale University in 1999 while studying under Robert van Sice, an acclaimed marimba player. In the early 2000s, the ensemble performed frequently in New York City — both at contemporary classical venues and at places like Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, home to a thriving indie rock and performance art scene.
“I couldn’t even quantify the effect that being in Brooklyn for those years had on the work that we’re doing now,” Sliwinski said.
By embracing art rock theatrics, the classically-trained percussionists found they could achieve crossover appeal, and they continue to attract an audience with diverse musical tastes. Sliwinski said “Who Turns Out the Light” will feel more like a rock concert than a traditional classical music performance.
“First and foremost, (the audience) is going to hear songs,” Sliwinski said. “… One of our tunes is a cover of an ABBA song called ‘Lay All Your Love on Me,’ which is a very recognizable song for a lot of people. Caroline sings the chorus, and the four of us stand around a marimba, playing this chorale that builds over the course of the song. … The piece sounds a bit like a medieval version of an ABBA song. So, we’re very eclectic in that way. We like to take things that are familiar and do things to them.”
Sliwinski said Sō Percussion has been working with Shaw for over a decade.
“Caroline was a Ph.D. student at Princeton in the years just before she won the Pulitzer Prize for ‘Partita,’” Sliwinski said. “She actually took our class on writing for percussion — the first one we ever taught at Princeton.”
Shaw was 30 when she won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 — the youngest person to ever win in that category.
“Who Turns Out the Light” will also feature performances by Ringdown, Shaw’s electro-pop duo with multi-instrumentalist Danni Lee Parpan.
“It really makes for a very eclectic evening,” Sliwinski said.
The concert is presented by Chamber Music Albuquerque and marks the finale of the organization’s 2025-2026 season.
Logan Royce Beitmen is an arts writer for the ϼ. He covers visual art, music, fashion, theater and more. Reach him at lbeitmen@abqjournal.com or on Instagram at .