Global InformationMichael Jeffrey Shapiro information
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.
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, Jerry Junkin, 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 Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, the United States Navy Band, the West Point Band, the Dallas Winds, 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.
- ^ a b c "Biography". Michael Shapiro. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
- ^ Goldberg, Mike (3 November 2020). "Composer Michael Shapiro Talks About His Score to the Film "Frankenstein"". VPM. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
- ^ Gresham, Mark (26 October 2023). "Q&A: Composer Michael Shapiro talks about his "Frankenstein—The Movie Opera"". EarRelevant. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
- ^ Gallagher, Danny (30 October 2018). "The Original Frankenstein Film Gets an Original Score, Courtesy of Composer Michael Shapiro". Dallas Observer. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
- ^ a b Pfeffer, Stacey (9 November 2022). "Michael Shapiro's VOICES Premieres, a Requiem Honoring Victims of the Holocaust". The Inside Press. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
- ^ Gruber, R.E. (2002). Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe. University of California Press. p. 269. ISBN 978-0-520-92092-7. Retrieved 2024-04-12.
- ^ Gurr, A.; Karim-Cooper, F. (2014). Moving Shakespeare Indoors: Performance and Repertoire in the Jacobean Playhouse. Cambridge University Press. p. 138. ISBN 978-1-107-04063-2. Retrieved 2024-04-12.
- ^ Page, Tim (8 January 1984). "MUSIC: MICHAEL SHAPIRO". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 April 2024.