SINGULARITy
FOR YOUR GRAMMY® CONSIDERATION
best contemporary classical composition
best orchestral performance
Composer: Shaun Drew, Conductor: Vladimir Martinka
Featuring: Czech National Symphony Orchestra, Northern Film Orchestra String Quartet
duration: 14:36
Composer+Producer Shaun Drew
Shaun Drew's Singularity breaks new musical and philosophical ground for the film and TV composer. Wishing to bring as much humanity as possible to the composition, Shaun captured breathtaking performances by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and Northern Film Orchestra String Quartet, which catapulted the work to new emotional heights. The result is a bold and heart-wrenching journey, with underlying concepts of AI, human replacement and the nature of the universe all woven into its fabric. The piece begins with a sparse, dreamy soundscape of keyboards and ambient synthesizers—eventually culminating in a frenetic, harmonious string orchestra passage that aims to reflect the sense of wonder, mystery and exhilaration of hurtling through space. Surely these human sensations could not be so eloquently and authentically expressed by machines alone—or could they? A related social media post by Drew asks his growing audience, “Could AI supplant the orchestra?” If Singularity is posited as a response to the composer’s own question—in this regard, it would seem that we humans may have nothing to fear.