Caroline Shaw to Release Score Album for Ken Burns’ New Leonardo da Vinci Documentary

Caroline Shaw composed the original score for Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon’s forthcoming documentary Leonardo da Vinci. On October 25, she’ll release the music on a new album for Nonesuch. Below, check out the new song “Intentions of the Mind.”

Shaw recorded her Leonardo da Vinci score with bassist John Patitucci and the three ensembles with which she works most closely: Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth. In a statement about the score, David McMahon said, “Caroline’s existing body of music—joyful, daring, at times transcendent, and wholly unique—seemed to speak directly to Leonardo, a seeking soul who, 500 years after his death, can come across as strikingly modern. A fully original score, we believed, would add crucial connective tissue to areas where the record of Leonardo’s life is thin and it’s possible to briefly lose his trail. The music Caroline created is dynamic, enthralling and filled with wonder.”

The Burnses and McMahon’s two-part, four-hour documentary airs on PBS on November 18 and 19. “No single person can speak to our collective effort to understand the world and ourselves,” Ken Burns said in a statement about his film. “But Leonardo had a unique genius for inquiry, aided by his extraordinary skills as an artist and scientist, that helps us better understand the natural world that we are part of and to appreciate more fully what it means to be alive and human.”

Caroline Shaw’s Leonardo da Vinci (Original Score) will follow her recent album with Sō Percussion, Rectangles and Circumstance. She also has lately shared two songs with her partner, Danni Lee Parpan, for their band Ringdown, “Two-Step” and “Ghost.”