The Monmouth Civic Chorus
Dr. Mark Shapiro, Artistic Director
Close to Perfect, Close to Home

Purity of tone, excellent clarity of line, subtle dynamic changes ...a beautiful collaboration between a conductor and his singers.
-- Asbury Park Press

Versatile conductor Mark Shapiro is one of a handful of conductors in North America to have won the prestigious ASCAP Adventurous Programming Award four times. Shapiro enjoys working with orchestras, opera companies, and choruses. He is Artistic Director of Cantori New York and the Monmouth Civic Chorus, and a frequent cover conductor for opera and concert performances by the Bridgeport Symphony, which he recently led in a performance with soprano Harolyn Blackwell. Shapiro is a regular guest conductor of the chamber orchestra Nova Sinfonia, in Halifax, with whom he will next appear in April, 2011. Upcoming engagements include the St. Cecilia Chorus in Carnegie Hall in April 2011; and Shapiro recently conducted a sold-out performance of music by Handel at the 5000-seat Roman amphitheater in Vaison-la-Romaine, France.

Opera credits include the American Opera Projects, the Center for Contemporary Opera, Metro Lyric Opera, and two successful seasons with the Opera Company of Middlebury (VT). Recent performance venues have included Zankel Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center, and Vaison-la-Romaine. Singers with whom Shapiro has worked include Sasha Cooke, Barbara Dever, Jennifer Zetlan, and many others. Shapiro has also been heard on PBS, conducting the soundtrack for Ric Burns' special on New York City, as well as on radio stations WQXR and WNYC.

Shapiro is on the faculties of the CW Post Campus of Long Island University and Mannes College the New School for Music. Each summer he directs the Conducting Program at the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, where he also teaches keyboard harmony and score reading. His conducting teachers included Gustav Meier and Markand Thakar.