Composers Bureau
Alex Shapiro
Biography
Education, Career, Performances and Publishing
Alex Shapiro (b. NYC, 1962), has become one of southern California's best known chamber music composers. She was educated at The Juilliard School as a composition student of Craig Shuler and Bruce Adolphe, and at Manhattan School of Music, where she was a student of John Corigliano and Ursula Mamlok. Her earlier composition studies were with Leo Edwards at Mannes College of Music and Michael Czajkowski and George Tsontakis at the Aspen Music School. Alex is a facile guitarist, as well as an accomplished pianist who studied for seven years with New York recitalist Marshall Kreisler. Alex moved to Los Angeles in 1983 and spent the first phase of her career composing scores for films, television and documentary projects. Subsequently, she returned to her love of concert music and is now steadily commissioned to compose new pieces for a wide variety of ensembles. Alex's chamber music is heard weekly in concerts across the U.S. and abroad, and her scores can be found in libraries and universities nationwide. Broadcast regularly on radio stations across the United States, Alex's works are published by Activist Music and widely distributed by Theodore Front Musical Literature and TrevCo Music.
Awards and Honors
Ms. Shapiro is the recipient of the 2004 Commissioned Composer Award from the California Association of Professional Music Teachers. The resulting new chamber work, Bioplasm, was premiered by The Los Angeles Flute Quartet at the CAPMT state conference in Los Angeles and was given a 2005 Composers Award from the Music Teachers National Association. Alex was the 2004 Composer-in-Residence at The Walden School in New Hampshire, and served on the 2004 McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowship Award panel in Minnesota. Among Alex's 2003 honors are her residence as the Alpha Chi Omega Foundation Fellow at The MacDowell Colony, and awards from The American Music Center, The American Composers Forum, and the international music fraternity Mu Phi Epsilon, which gave its 2003 Best Original Composition Award to Alex's large-form chamber work, At the Abyss. In February 2006 Alex will be the Composer-in-Residence and Moderator for the Santa Clara University New Music Festival.
Alex was honored with a 2000 Artist Fellowship Award for the Performing Arts from The California Arts Council, as well as a 2001 Artist Award from the Los Angeles Alumni chapter of Mu Phi Epsilon. Her sonata for double bass and piano, Of Bow and Touch, was given a 2002 Award from The International Society of Bassists, and her Trio for Clarinet, Violin and Piano has received prizes in the Best Instrumental Composition category from the Composers Guild (1999) and the Best Performance category from the Delius Association of Florida (1998). Since 1998 Alex has been the recipient of generous yearly Standard Awards from The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), in recognition of the many performances of her works around the world. In 2001 she was presented with a Distinguished Service Award from The American Composers Forum of Los Angeles.
Recordings
Alan Baer, Principal tubist of the New York Philharmonic, recorded Ms. Shapiro's tuba sonata Music for Two Big Instruments in May 2005 with pianist Bradley Haag, and the piece is the first track on Baer's debut CD titled Coast to Coast. Ms. Shapiro's unusual work for flute quartet, Bioplasm, appears on the 2005 CD released by the Los Angeles Flute Quartet called Above and Beyond. A bassoon sonata, Of Breath and Touch, was recorded by bassoonist Carolyn Beck and pianist Delores Stevens for Ms. Beck's 2005 CD on Crystal Records titled Beck and Call, which also includes Deep, Alex's work for contrabassoon and electronics. Also In 2005, German pianist Susanne Kessel recorded Alex's solo work, For My Father, from Piano Suite No. 1: The Resonance of Childhood for Das Kalifornische Konzert, Kessel's latest CD for the Oehms Classics/WDR label.
Other recent CD releases include pianist Teresa McCollough's 2005 Innova Recordings disc, Music for Hammers and Sticks, which features Alex's award-winning trio, At the Abyss, which McCollough recorded with Thomas Burritt, mallets and Peggy Benkeser, percussion. Ms. Shapiro's Sonata for Piano was recorded by Ms. McCollough and appears on the 2001 Innova Recordings CD, New American Piano Music. Alex's Trio for Clarinet, Violin and Piano, is featured on the 2000 Cambria Master Recordings CD, Clariphonia: Music of the 20th Century on Clarinet, recorded by clarinetist Berkeley Price, violinist Nancy Roth and pianist Deon Nielsen Price.
Professional Involvement
Alex is a familiar face in the new music world, as a composer, essayist and panelist. Ms. Shapiro often serves as an animated moderator and speaker at many southern California music events, including those for The Society of Composers & Lyricists, The Film Music Society, Music Business Chops seminars, the NARAS program GrammyR in the Schools, IAWM's International Congress of Women in Music, and in March 2004, as co-host of a special "First Nights" presentation with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Hall. A frequent guest lecturer to composition classes at universities around the U.S., Alex is currently President of the Board of Directors of The American Composers Forum of Los Angeles, Chairperson of ACF/LA's Advisory Council, and the moderator of ACF/LA's popular bimonthly Los Angeles Composer's Salon Series in Hollywood. She has served as an officer of NACUSA and of the Pacific Southern Chapter of The College Music Society, and spent three terms on the Board of Directors of The Society of Composers & Lyricists, including two years as the organization's Vice president. Alex resides in Malibu and Santa Barbara, California, and when she's not exploring the tide pools or sailing, she frequently updates her website www.alexshapiro.org with concert information and audio clips of her pieces.
Further Information
For further information about Alex Shapiro, please visit her website at alexshapiro.org.
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