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Michael Shapiro begins his fifth season in 2006/2007 as Music Director and Conductor of The Chappaqua Orchestra. In leading the orchestra, his broad experience as a conductor, composer, and performer have revitalized the orchestra.
As a conductor, Michael Shapiro has performed internationally including appearances in Berlin, Siena, Victoria, New York, Boston, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C. His repertoire includes most of the standard symphonic, operatic, and ballet works, to which he brings an insider’s understanding and appreciation for new music. He also worked as an assistant conductor at the Zürich Opera Studio and has appeared internationally as the conductor of his own music, including recording the film score for the Israel Broadcasting Authority documentary Distant Relatives.
Michael Shapiro has worked in many musical and business pursuits, including as a composer, an accompanist to opera and Broadway singers, an administrator of his own artistic productions, and a lecturer and writer on musical and cultural history.
Michael Shapiro's compositions include works for solo voice, piano, chamber groups, and orchestra, as well as for television, film, and opera. The New York Times characterized his music as "possessing a rare melodic gift." His dramatic, yet lyrical, style reflects an attention to clear and simple expression tied to dynamic impulse. He forges diverse compositional techniques into music direct in its impact.
He regularly performs his own music and conducted The Chappaqua Orchestra in the world premiere of his score for the classic talkie film Frankenstein at the Jacob Burns Film Center and later at the Paramount Theater in Peekskill. The work received its Massachusetts premiere in 2005 at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Boston and was profiled on the front page of the Boston Globe. Recently, it was performed at the Berkshire Museum and at historic Memorial Hall in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts.
Michael Shapiro's works have been widely performed in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and he has received numerous honors and commissions. First performances of his works have been broadcast over National Public Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting System, the Israel Broadcasting Authority, Sender Freies Berlin, and major New York stations, including WQXR and WCBS-TV.
Michael Shapiro's prizes and grants include those from Martha Baird Rockefeller Composer's Assistance, Meet the Composer, Henry Evans Traveling Fellowship of Columbia University, the Columbian Award, Sigma Alpha Iota Composer's Competition Prize, and the Chappaqua Orchestra's Boris Koutzen Memorial Fund.
Michael Shapiro served for two years as Music Consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where he produced and performed the music of composers who perished in or fled Europe during the Second World War. He also serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Conductors Guild.
Born into a musical family, Michael Shapiro began expressing himself with music at an early age. He won various piano competitions during his youth and, today, continues performing as an accompanist to singers and as a chamber music pianist.
Michael Shapiro's composition teachers included Elie Siegmeister, Vincent Persichetti, and the late Sir Malcolm Arnold. Trained in conducting by Carl Bamberger at The Mannes School and more recently by Harold Farberman at Bard College, He also studied solfege and score reading at The Juilliard School with Renee Longy.
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