Mark Shapiro: Life Carries the Day
Versatile conductor Mark Shapiro is a true Renaissance spirit. Equally at home with orchestras, choruses, and opera, he’s unique among North American conductors for having won six ASCAP Awards leading three different ensembles. The New York Times has admired his “spirit of adventure” and praised his work as "insightful” while saluting the “uncommon polish” of his music-making. Opera News appreciated his “superb pacing and great confidence.”
Shapiro is Music Director of The Prince Edward Island Symphony and The Cecilia Chorus of New York, which performs regularly in Carnegie Hall. As Artistic Director of Cantori New York, Shapiro has led the group in appearances in all five major halls at Lincoln Center. Cantori and Shapiro have been presented by Death of Classical, Gotham Early Music Series, Great Performers at Lincoln Center, Music at the Anthology, World Financial Center Arts&Events, and many others. They have recently performed Arvo Pärt’s massive choral work, Kanon Pokajanen. You can see Mark’s extended interview beforehand with Peter Bouteneff here.
Shapiro has been a visiting conductor five times with Juilliard Vocal Arts, and has conducted for American Opera Projects, the Center for Contemporary Opera, Encompass New Opera Theatre, Underworld Opera, and the Opera Company of Middlebury, as well as the opera programs of Hofstra, Mannes and Rutgers. Favorite artistic partners have included Julia Bullock, Kathleen Chalfant, Sasha Cooke, Denise Djokic, Marc Djokic, Ryan Speedo Green, the Prism Saxophone Quartet, Maryann Plunkett, Jennifer Rowley, William Guanbo Su and many others.
Shapiro has appeared on WNYC, WQXR, Sirius, and CBC, and was heard on PBS leading the orchestral soundtrack for Ric Burns’s special on New York City. He has recorded for the Albany, Arsis, Newport Classics and PGM labels. His recording of Frank Martin’s oratorio Le vin herbé was an Opera News Editor’s Choice. His 2021 album of music by Philip Glass with Irish violinist Gregory Harrington and the Janacek Philharmonic reached the Billboard Classical Chart twice.
Shapiro’s love for teaching finds expression at Juilliard Extension, Mannes, and Teachers College, where he teaches conducting, score-reading, and more. He has been a teaching artist for the Metropolitan Lindemann Young Artist Program, and each summer directs the conducting program of the European American Musical Alliance in Paris.
In our conversation we refer to:
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin (a biography of Abraham Lincoln)
The Brain’s Sense of Movement by Alain Berthoz
Theology, Music and Time by Jeremy Begbie (see our Luminous episode with him)
The composer Frank Martin, and chiefly his composition Et la vie l'emporta
The music over the end credits is Chris DiBlasio’s The Best Beloved: IV. My beloved is mine, and I am his sung by Cantori New York directed by Mark Shapiro, on the album “Echoes and Shadows.”