Faculty

Profile

Versatile conductor Mark Shapiro is exceptional among artistic leaders in North America for having won a prestigious ASCAP Programming Award six times, achieving the unique distinction of winning such an award with three ensembles over a two-decade span. Equally at home with orchestras, opera companies, and choruses, Shapiro is Music Director of the Prince Edward Island Symphony and The Cecilia Chorus and Orchestra of New York, which performs an annual series in Carnegie Hall.   He is a frequent guest conductor with the chamber orchestra Nova Sinfonia in Halifax.

Shapiro is also Artistic Director of the award-winning chamber chorus Cantori New York, which has been presented in all five major halls at Lincoln Center, and was heard in Marseille when that city was European Cultural Capitol.  Cantori has released four commercial recordings, on the Albany, Arsis, Newport Classics, and PGM labels, one of which was an Opera News Editor’s Choice.

Shapiro has conducted several operas for Juilliard Vocal Arts, and has enjoyed multiple engagements with American Opera Projects, Carolina Coast Chamber Festival, The Center for Contemporary Opera, Hofstra Opera Theater, The Mannes Opera, Middlebury Opera and Underworld Opera.

Shapiro’s conducting has been praised as “insightful” by The New York Times, which has also saluted his “spirit of adventure” as evidenced by his programming.  Favorite milestones include the New York premieres of Dame Ethel Smyth’s first major choral-orchestral work, her Mass in D, as well as her last, The Prison.  Cherished collaborators include the actors Kathleen Chalfant, Maryann Plunkett and Stephen Spinella.

Shapiro has been heard on PBS, conducting the soundtrack for Ric Burns’ special on New York City, as well as on radio stations WQXR and WNYC, and Sirius Satellite Radio. He is a founding member of the advisory board of the Ann Stookey Fund for New Music.   Shapiro’s recording of music by Philip Glass with Irish violinist Gregory Harrington and the Janacek Philharmonic is scheduled for release in 2019.

Shapiro teaches conducting at the Juilliard School (Evening Division), at the Mannes School of Music, and at Columbia Teachers College; and he has been a Teaching Artist with the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Program.  As an Associate Professor of Music at LIU Post, Shapiro was twice awarded the campus’s highest academic honor. Each summer he directs the conducting program of the European American Musical Alliance (EAMA) in Paris. He lectures on Music and Mind, and is active as both a narrator and presenter at orchestral concerts. 

Degrees Held

B.A., Yale University
Diplôme de direction d'orchestre, Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris
Graduate Performance Diploma, Orchestral Conducting, Peabody Conservatory
D.M.A., Stonybrook University

Professional Affiliation

Music Director, The Prince Edward Island Symphony
Music Director, The Cecilia Chorus of New York
Artistic Director, Cantori New York