“Close your eyes,” says Sō Percussion’s Jason Treuting between tracks ‘Sing On’ and ‘Silently Invisibly’. “On the count of three, let out the most joyous whoop you can muster.” The audience duly obliges, matching the energy of Caroline Shaw and her collaborators who by their own admission “came hot out the gate”.

The joyous audience whooping is in aid of a “front to back” performance of their 2024 album, Rectangles and Circumstance (a new performance structure that is being road tested rather successfully). This matches the whooping and howling introduced to the hall in 92NY by Shaw herself who has been standing centre-stage, one hand clutching the mic, the other tucked behind her back. The lines of eponymous opening track ‘Rectangles and Circumstance’ pose questions that transport the room into a state of contemplation. What’s the solitary game you play? What are you content to say? What’s your slot machine ballet? All fantastic notions which summon a state of curiosity, a mood that is richly developed by Caroline’s vocoder and vocal loops (a sound world that will be familiar to viewers of 2022’s Fleishman Is in Trouble) while her percussive friends’ polyrhythms lend drive and groove to proceedings.

This configuration of beat and harmony is broken mid-set, maybe at the moment that a record would be turned from side A to B. Into this space emerges Alicia Olatuja to bring the watery textures of Narrow Sea to life. Her vocal lines are mesmerizing, weaving, mystical. They interact like light on the water that is Sō’s singular tickling, prodding, stroking of various instruments including the piano, xylophone and water-filled vessels. This then gives way to the final 5 tracks of the album and another guest feature in the form of Ringdown who joins Shaw for ‘Slow Motion’. Of these closing tracks, perhaps the most remarkable bodily moment is the hum at the end of ‘This’ which is perhaps the deepest hum that has ever resonated in the hall and the bodies therein.

Embodied music—both of the artists and the audience—is perhaps the greatest gift of this collaboration. It’s impossible for a head not to bob, a finger not to tap, a foot not to catch a beat as Caroline and Sō create their lattice of notes and pulses. Hearing the record start to finish also illuminates their shoutout to Nonesuch’s David Bither who advised on the track order. In an age of shuffled playlists, this sort of musical choreography is an art that can be overlooked. Not tonight. As their ‘cover’ of Schubert’s ‘An Die Musik’ lands, the initial whoop has burnt down to a now wistful hum. It might be the first time that they’ve played the record chronologically, let’s hope it’s not the last.

Get your copy of the record from Nonesuch. Check out the rest of 92NY’s concert program for the 2024/25 music season here. Photo credit: Joseph Sinnott