Episode 53 - Alex Shapiro

Composer Alex Shapiro kicks off year two of the podcast with a terrific conversation about her career and her remarkable perspectives about composing and music.

Topics:

• How growing up in New York City with two very supportive parents helped Alex to a career in music.
• The importance of “showing up” and how it leads to amazing connections and opportunities.
• Her remarkable story about her transition from writing commercial music for media to becoming a concert composer and then how she got involved in writing for band.
• Her creative process and the story of how a glass of Scotch and the frustration of a late night led to the creation of her work Paper Cut.

Links:

• Alex Shapiro, Composer
• Resources for Programming Music
• Alex Shapiro: Paper Cut
• Alex Shapiro: Rock Music
• The Portfolio Composer Podcast
• Steven Pressfield: The War of Art
• Leonard Bernstein’s Harvard Lectures
• Johan Sebastian Bach: The Italian Concerto, Movement II

Biography:

Composer Alex Shapiro aligns note after note with the hope that at least a few of them will actually sound good next to each other. Her persistence at this activity, as well as non-fiction music writing, arts advocacy, public speaking, wildlife photography, and the shameless instigation of insufferable puns on Facebook, has led to a happy life. Drawing from a broad musical palette that giddily ignores genre, Alex's acoustic and electroacoustic works are published by Activist Music LLC, performed and broadcast daily, and can be found on nearly thirty commercial releases from record labels around the world.