Caroline Adelaide Shaw (born August 1, 1982) is an American composer of contemporary classical music, violinist, and singer.

[1][3] She is distantly related through her mother to Chang and Eng Bunker, conjoined twins from then-Siam (now Thailand), who are her great-great-grandfather and great-great-great-uncle.

[4] At two years old, Shaw began playing the violin, being initially taught the Suzuki method by her mother Jon, a violinist and singer.

[6] NPR's Elena Saavedra Buckley notes that Shaw's "personal place of worship was in front of her Sony boombox radio.

[8][9][10][11] The jury citation praised the composition as "a highly polished and inventive a cappella work uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects.

[26] Shaw appeared as herself in season 4 of the Amazon Prime series Mozart in the Jungle, for a story line that involved a main character seeking to premiere her piece "Hi" in a competition for conductors.

These received their world premiere, performed by the Calidore String Quartet, at the Cadogan Hall, London on July 16, 2018, in the BBC Proms, where they followed her 2016 work First Essay, Nimrod.

According to Shaw, Nimrod was composed while listening to a recording of Marilynne Robinson's book The Givenness of Things and then in the 2016 US presidential election, which she stated accounted for the "disintegration of elements" in the piece.

[37] [38] Byron Schenkman & Friends (re-named Sound Salon) commissioned Caroline Shaw’s Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings to mark their 10th anniversary season.