Violinist Caroline Shaw on a new level, courtesy of Kanye West

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There have been some mammoth pinch-me moments in Caroline Shaw's performing career, but last month's U.S. Democratic National Convention fundraiser is a standout. On a stark stage, empty save for Shaw and her little keyboard, Shaw purred, murmured and ultimately wailed an ethereal opening to Kanye West's Power, until the curtain rose to reveal West himself.

"That was crazy. I wasn't even nervous because it was so insane," says Shaw about the San Francisco appearance.

"There are times in your life when you're not allowed to get nervous … and I'm very lucky that I'm able to focus when I need to," she continues. "It's not surgery; that's what I tell myself. It's just music. There's nothing terrible that can go wrong here."

Although an accomplished violinist, Shaw emerged from relative obscurity in 2013 when she became the youngest winner of the Pulitzer Prize for music; she was 30. That same year, she became acquainted with David Pay, who runs Vancouver's Music on Main series. Music on Main scooped her up as composer in residence – a two-year gig that was announced last year – and this week, the curtain will rise again on Shaw's genius at Music on Main's Modulus Festival.

Shaw, who was born in North Carolina and is now based in New York, began studying the violin at 2 and composed her first pieces when she was 10 or 11. She joined the vocal group Roomful of Teeth in 2009 and began thinking about composing vocal work – not traditional choral pieces, but compositions that explore the voice and "all of its different colours," she says. "I started getting really interested in writing for vocal sounds separately from words." The ensemble employs throat singing, yodelling and all sorts of vocal gymnastics to the almost guaranteed amazement of audiences.

Early in Roomful of Teeth's life, Shaw began working on a six-minute piece, Passacaglia, for the group. "It was such a thrill to get to write this combination of sounds and I just kept going," she says.

Passacaglia became the fourth movement in her Partita for 8 Voices – the work that won Shaw that Pulitzer – and all kinds of attention.

"The long and short of it is that before then, a lot of people didn't know that I even wrote music, and since then, a lot of people ask me to write music who would not have asked me before."

People like Kanye West.

West saw Roomful of Teeth perform in Los Angeles last May and came backstage at intermission to meet her. He was excited by her work and wanted to show her a couple of things on his phone; things he was working on, as Shaw recalls. They kept talking beyond that night and began collaborating with different arrangements and material. In addition to the Power performance, West posted a remixed version of 808s & Heartbreak opener Say You Will featuring Shaw – who nuh-nuh-nuh-nuhs a silky opening to his 2008 auto-tuned downer.

"It's just sort of an ongoing project," says Shaw, of her collaboration with West. "It's really one of the most inspiring musical experiences of my life so far."

When asked if there's more to come, she responded, "I think I'm not allowed to say."

Lest one might think Pay's Music on Main series pales in comparison, Shaw – speaking from a castle in Denmark, where she was teaching a workshop this week – was hugely enthusiastic about her Canadian composer-in-residence stint.

"There are very few people who program as well and as thoughtfully as David Pay," she says. "He's doing a lot of things that we're trying to do in New York, which he's been doing for so long."

Another pinch-me moment for Shaw came last March, when she made her solo violin debut with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, playing her own concerto, Lo – its world premiere – to a packed concert hall.

One thing she recalls about that night was "just the feeling of remembering that I had started the violin when I was really young and realizing how far I had come from when I was five years old," she says.

I ask if she became emotional with that realization. No, she says.

"There are other things to concentrate on, like, don't drop your bow. Is my dress falling off? These are more important."

Music on Main's Modulus Festival runs through Nov. 20 at a variety of venues in Vancouver. Caroline Shaw will participate in several events.