American conductor Mark Shapiro is an acclaimed conductor of orchestras, opera and choruses, with an extraordinarily broad and diverse repertoire. He has built a reputation for exactness in musicianship, fluent and engaging rehearsals, and emotionally and spiritually powerful performances. Shapiro is 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.”
ORCHESTRA. Following a decade-long tenure as Music Director of The Prince Edward Island Symphony – the first and only American to hold this position – Shapiro was recently honored with the title of Conductor Emeritus. Repertoire has included symphonies by Beethoven, Berlioz, Brahms, Dvorak, Mahler, Mozart, Nielsen, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky; works by Barber, Britten, Bruch, Copland, Delius, Ravel, Stravinsky; concertos with Canadian luminaries including violinist Mark Djokic, trumpeter Paul Merkelo, and cellist Julia MacLaine; and collaborations with pop artists Lennie Galant, Ten Strings and a Goatskin, Vishten, and others.
Additional orchestral engagements include Nova Sinfonia in Halifax and the Bridgeport Symphony featuring soprano Harolyn Blackwell. Shapiro’s critically lauded album Glass Hour of works by Philip Glass, with Irish violinist Gregory Harrington and the Janacek Philharmonic, reached the Billboard classical chart twice. Shapiro was an invited conductor for the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and can be heard leading the orchestral soundtrack in Ric Burns’s PBS special about New York City.
OPERA. Shapiro has conducted five productions for Juilliard Vocal Arts, including operas by Britten, Poulenc, and Stravinsky. Singers he has conducted at Juilliard include Young Concert Artist Winner William Sokolow and Musical America Vocalist of the Year Davone Tines. A sympathetic and imaginative advocate for both contemporary operas and core repertoire, Shapiro has conducted new works with American Opera Projects, The Center for Contemporary Opera, Encompass New Opera Theater, and Underworld Opera; and traditional works with the opera departments of Hofstra, Mannes and Rutgers as well as The Opera Company of Middlebury. Stage directors have included Edward Berkeley, Mary Birnbaum, John Giampetro, Emma Griffin, Crystal Manich, and Louisa Müller. Shapiro was recently appointed Principal Conductor of the new Marshall Opera in New York City.
CHORUS. Shapiro is Artistic Director of Cantori New York and Music Director of The Cecilia Chorus of New York, which performs two concerts each season in Carnegie Hall. Shapiro has led Cantori in appearances in all five major halls at Lincoln Center, and he and the ensemble 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, LaMama, and many others. Under Shapiro’s leadership, both groups have commissioned extensively and given multiple world, US, and regional premieres.
With The Cecilia Chorus of New York, Shapiro has presented major singers in Carnegie Hall debuts, including Julia Bullock, Ryan Speedo Green, Jennifer Rowley, and William Guanbo Su. His imaginative programming included the first-ever Carnegie Hall performance of a four-piano arrangement of Rite of Spring featuring GRAMMY®-winner Cory Smyth. He is proud to have conducted the first-ever Carnegie Hall performances of major choral-orchestral works by Margaret Bonds and Dame Ethel Smyth, and to have presented and led the Carnegie Hall headliner debut of jazz great Cyrus Chestnut.
Favorite artistic partners have included award-winning actors Kathleen Chalfant, Maryann Plunkett, and Stephen Spinella; renowned singers Kearstin Piper Brown, Sasha Cooke, and Angela Meade; and virtuoso instrumentalists Miranda Cuckson, Nadia Sirota, Prism saxophone quartet, and Sandbox Percussion.
Shapiro is a member of the steering committee of The Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. He teaches conducting at Juilliard, Mannes School of Music, and the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, and was a teaching artist for the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artists Program. His Tiktok assessing the performance of Bradley Cooper in Maestro has been viewed over 2.3 million times. Also through Juilliard, Shapiro teaches sought-after workshops in leadership development.
