Caroline Shaw’s How to Fold the Wind, recorded by Ars Nova Copenhagen and conducted by Paul Hillier, is a mesmerising choral work that expands on the vocal acrobatics the composer has explored with her Grammy-winning ensemble, Roomful of Teeth.

Co-commissioned in 2019 by Chamber Choir Ireland and Kilkenny Arts Festival (with funding from the Arts Council/an Chomhairle Ealaíon) together with Carnegie Hall (New York), Ars Nova (Copenhagen), and Bella Voce (Chicago), the piece is inspired by Japanese origami. It uses speech, inhaled notes, wordless melodies, and innovative vocal effects to fold individual voices together into a complex whole.

The complete recording is packaged as part of a split album with Michael Gordon’s A Western, recorded by Theatre of Voices and also conducted by Hillier. ‘The music calls for ordinary singing,’ Hillier explains in his liner notes, ‘but also for other vocal sounds, some drawn from everyday speech, or counting out numbers, or vocalizing phonemes – some voiced, some unvoiced using just breath. At first the story is hidden, then it begins to reveal itself in brief utterances, which lead us in a different direction.’