Ember Gala 2024

Michael Shapiro’s works have been performed throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe—with broadcasts of premieres on National Public Radio (NPR), the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA),  Polskie Radio (Poland), Australian and South African stations, Sender Freies Berlin, WQXR, WCBS-TV, SiriusXM Symphony Hall Living American and Vincent Caruso’s Classics on Film, and over 50 United States, Canadian, and British public and commercial radio stations. His music, which spans across all media, has been characterized in a New York Times review as “possessing a rare melodic gift.” His oeuvre includes more than 100 works for solo voice, piano, chamber ensembles, chorus, orchestra, as well as for opera, film, and television, with recordings on Naxos and Paumanok Records. Michael Shapiro’s entire catalogue is published by Universal Edition/Wien, the publisher of Mahler, Strauss, Janacek, Bartok, Weill, and many other luminaries.

Michael Shapiro has collaborated with such artists as Teresa Stratas, José Ferrer, Janos Starker, Sir Malcolm Arnold, Marin Alsop, Sergiu Comissiona, Deborah Simpkin King, Grant Gershon, Jerry Junkin, Paul Shaffer, Eugene Drucker, Kim Cattrall, Tim Fain, Matthew Kraemer, Lara Downes, Gottfried Wagner, Alexis Cole, Edward Arron, Jerome Rose, Stathis Karapanos, Mariko Anraku, Elliott Forrest, Steven Beck, Ariadne Greif, Daniel Mutlu, John Fullam, Captain Kenneth Collins, Jose Ramos Santana, Clamma Dale, Anita Darian, Florence Levitt, Kikuei Ikeda, Ayako Yoshida, Harris Poor, John Edward Niles, David Leibowitz, Robert Tomaro, Anthony LaGruth, Kathryn Amyotte, James Allen Anderson, Matthew Thomas Troy, Sarah McKoin, Albert Nguyen, Kevin Suetterlin, David Kehler, Jeffery Meyer, Glen Hemberger, Diva Goodfriend-Koven, Andrey Litvinenko, and Emily Wong, and organizations such as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, LA Opera, Atlanta Opera, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Ember Choral Arts, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi (LaVerdi), Philharmonisches Orchester der Stadt Trier (Theater Trier), Houston Symphony Orchestra, Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Charleston Symphony Orchestra, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfonica de Puerto Rico, United States Navy Band, West Point Band, Royal Canadian Air Force Band, Dallas Winds, Dragefjetts Musikkorps, St. Petersburg (Russia) Chamber Philharmonic, Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Traverse Symphony Orchestra, New York Repertory Orchestra, Beloit Janesville Symphony, Garden State Philharmonic, Piedmont Wind Symphony, Western Piedmont Symphony, Opera Theatre of Northern Virginia, Steamboat Springs Strings Music Festival, Westchester Concert Singers, International Opera Center at the Zürich Opera, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Israel Broadcasting Authority, Sender Freies Berlin, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, National Public Radio (NPR), WCBS-TV, WQXR Radio, Milken Archive of Jewish Music, American Jewish Committee, Hawthorne String Quartet, Locrian Chamber Ensemble, Amernet String Quartet, Artemis, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Festspillene i Bergen (Bergen International Festival), and Dateline NBC, and universities in New York, California, Texas, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Louisiana, North Dakota, Arizona, Illinois, Louisiana, Ohio, Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, Nebraska, North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, and Tennessee.

Michael Shapiro guest conducts internationally and is Laureate Conductor of The Chappaqua Orchestra in New York’s Westchester County, which he conducted for the world premiere of his score for the classic 1931 film Frankenstein (directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff and Colin Clive) (since its premiere the work has received over 60 productions internationally), as well as for the world premiere of his own orchestral work, Roller Coaster, which received its West Coast premiere under the baton of Marin Alsop at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music while Shapiro was a composer in residence. He served for two years as the music consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where he produced and performed music by a number of composers who were either murdered by the Germans and their collaborators or had survived as refugees from the Third Reich. He has also been the assistant conductor at the Zurich Opera Studio.

The son of a Klezmer band clarinetist, Michael Shapiro was born in Brooklyn, New York, and spent most of his high school years in Baldwin, a Long Island suburb, where he was a music student of Consuelo Elsa Clark, William Zurcher, and Rudolf Bosakowski. The winner of several piano competitions during his youth, he earned his B.A. at Columbia College, Columbia University, where he majored in English literature and concentrated in music, benefiting most—according to his own assessment—from some of the department’s stellar musicology faculty, which, at that time, included such international luminaries as Paul Henry Lang, Denis Stevens, Joel Newman, and others. He studied conducting independently with Carl Bamberger at the Mannes College of Music in New York and later with Harold Farberman at Bard College. At The Juilliard School, where he earned his master’s degree, he studied solfège and score reading with the renowned Mme. Renée Longy—known to generations of Juilliard students as “the infamous madame of dictation” for her rigorous demands and classic pedagogic methods—and composition with Vincent Persichetti. His most influential composition teacher, however, was Elie Siegmeister, with whom Shapiro studied privately.