Michael Shapiro | |
|---|---|
 Michael Shapiro 2002 | |
| Background information | |
| Genres | Classical music |
| Occupations | Composer, conductor, pianist |
| Website | www |
Michael Jeffrey Shapiro is an American composer, conductor, and author.
Contents
- Selected work
- Opera
- Film scores
- Symphonies
- Orchestra
- Band
- Concerti
- Chamber
- Solo Instrumental
- Piano
- Choral
- Song cycles
- Recordings
- References
- Further reading
- External links
He was born in Brooklyn, New York, and studied at Columbia College, Columbia University, the Mannes College of Music and the Juilliard School. [1] He has worked with musicians and performers including Teresa Stratas, Janos Starker, Marin Alsop, Sergiu Comissiona, Kim Cattrall, Clamma Dale, Hila Plitmann, Grant Gershon, and Anita Darian. [1] He has conducted, composed for or worked with organizations including the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Jewish Committee, the Hawthorne String Quartet, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Los Angeles Opera, the Atlanta Opera, the United States Navy Band, the West Point Band, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. [1]
Shapiro has been the music director and conductor of the Chappaqua Orchestra. He has written a score for the 1931 film Frankenstein . [2] [3] [4]
Shapiro was music consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He has put on concerts by Jewish composers who had fled The Holocaust or had been murdered during it, and musicians imprisoned in Theresienstadt Ghetto. [5] He has composed an oratorio, VOICES, for those who were murdered in the Holocaust. [5]
His writing includes the book The Jewish 100, and research into klezmer music and into music in the plays of William Shakespeare. [6] [7]
In 1984, Tim Page, writing in The New York Times , described Shapiro as [8]
a solid, conservative craftsman whose music, at its best, is marked by a direct expressivity that is often captivating. He has an ear for the English language, and three sets of terse, epigrammatic songs, though uneven, showed an unquestionable melodic gift. Mr. Shapiro writes in an idiom that might be characterized as gently dissonant, eschewing angular vocal leaps and bounds in favor of linear continuity.
