Celebrating the Arts - Dwight-Englewood School

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ALUMNIPROFILE Dwight-Englewood School 10 Mark Shapiro ’77: His Forte Is Conducting From the classics to new and rarely performed music, Shapiro has made his mark as an intellectually curious and versatile conductor. Mark Shapiro ’77 conducting Poulenc’s opera Les Mamelles de Tirésias at the Juilliard School in December 2010. Photo by Nan Melville. Variety is the spice of life. That aphorism might possibly be the best way to describe the infinitely interesting banquet that is Mark Shapiro’s existence as a conductor of choral groups, orchestras, and opera. The 20-year artistic director of both Cantori New York and the Monmouth Civic Chorus, Shapiro is highly sought as a visiting and guest conductor. He has worked with Juilliard Vocal Arts, the Nova Sinfonia chamber orchestra of Halifax, and the Bridgeport (Connecticut) Symphony, among others. Recent special engagements have included conducting New York’s St. Cecilia Chorus in Carnegie Hall and presenting a Handel oratorio in a 5,000-seat Roman amphitheater in Vaison-la-Romaine, France. Yes, Mark Shapiro goes to many different places—geographically and artistically too. Although he is a devotee of the great composers—Beethoven’s 5th Symphony is one of his favorite works—he has become known as a very versatile conductor and a champion of new and neglected music. A longtime collaborator with Teatro Grattacielo, an opera company that specializes in little-known verismo operas, Shapiro has also worked with the Center for Contemporary Opera and is an astonishing four-time winner of the Adventurous Programming Award of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. As if all of that weren’t enough, Shapiro is also a teaching faculty member at Long Island University and Mannes College The New School for Music. For fun, he also heads the conducting program and teaches at the European American Musical Alliance in Paris every summer. “I love teaching,” says Shapiro. “I think its one of the best ways to understand what you’re doing. There’s a whole problem solving element to conducting and teaching that is enormously interesting.” Variety is indeed the spice of life. Notes Shapiro, “One of the things I dread in life is boredom, and that is never a problem.” The Role of the Conductor At the most basic level, a conductor must have an understanding of music and a knack for communicating with and organizing people. But Shapiro doesn’t think there is only one “right” interpretation of a piece of music—even the classics can be fresh. In this way, the conductor can be thought of as a sort of chef: He takes ingredients that are available (a particular piece of music, a particular ensemble of musicians) and with a certain know-how and flair (a little more articulation here, a measure of ritardando there…) creates something distinctive and memorable. Nor does Shapiro think of himself as the big boss. One of his favorite metaphors
is that a conductor is a sort of jockey. (“Not that I’ve ever been on a horse!” he declares.) It’s a matter of directing and channeling the energies of something that’s very much alive and in motion. Says Shapiro, “To my mind, both the piece and the musicians are alive.” The result of Shapiro’s labors is a complex, coordinated, public performance that draws on the talents of dozens of musicians and engages audiences of hundreds or perhaps thousands of people. Yet each performance begins in a very quiet, private, and personal way when Shapiro sits down—sometimes at the piano—to explore the music score for the first time. Where to begin? “You look for the elements of the music that are surprising or personal to the composer,” says Shapiro. “I try to find out what sort of music it is—What world am I in? I spend a lot of time just trying to let the music suggest things to me.” Shapiro, who has a great interest in the science, perception, and cognition of music, notes that a composer’s choices “offer a window into the mind.” Even when the conductor has a clear sense of the way he wants to interpret the music, rehearsals evoke new ideas. “The live performance is different from what you imagined,” says Shapiro. “I always try to be in front of the ensemble with a kind of open-minded attention.” D-E Orchestra to Go Abroad After all, he points out, the musicians bring their own strengths and experiences to bear. While he avoids listening to recordings of music he is going to undertake, Shapiro values the interplay between himself and his musicians. He says, “I think it’s great to get ideas from other people.” While Shapiro has worked with some amazing professionals—renowned singers Harolyn Blackwell and Barbara Dever among them—he also works with highly talented but amateur groups. He notes, “I really enjoy working with ensembles and helping them achieve more than they thought they could. That’s hugely rewarding.” Proximity to Great Works Shapiro grew up in a family that appreciated many kinds of music, from folk to opera. He took piano lessons in his youth and enjoyed singing in the chorus as a student at Dwight-Englewood. At that time he didn’t know he would make a career in music. That didn’t come until later, at Yale University, where he started a small vocal ensemble and conducted pieces he knew from high school and college classes, along the way to earning his bachelor’s degree in music, summa cum laude. He went on to obtain diplomas in orchestral conducting from the École Normale de Musique in Paris, where the foundation in French he gained from D-E first proved its tremendous Dwight-Englewood musicians will have the opportunity to perform for new audiences and to experience the vibrant history and culture of London and its environs on an eight-day tour June 11–18. The trip includes sightseeing excursions to the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, Bath, and more. The orchestra will perform three concerts while abroad, one of them in Banqueting House, the last surviving building from the Palace of Whitehall. Music Department faculty member John Littlefield explains how students were selected for the trip. “We held auditions in the fall, and 34 students were accepted to what we have titled the Dwight-Englewood Touring Orchestra,” he says. The group will perform a number of pieces on their tour, including Mozart’s “Jupiter Symphony” (first movement), Ravel’s “Pavanne for a Dead Princess,” Dvorak’s “Czech Suite” (last movement), and Gershwin’s “Prelude No. 2.” usefulness, and the Peabody Conservatory, where he studied under the tutelage of Gustav Meier. Shapiro also holds a doctorate in choral conducting from Stonybrook University. He does not remember the first piece he conducted when he was just starting out, but he does remember tackling Beethoven’s epic 80-minute-long Missa Solemnis, a demanding, rarely performed masterwork that requires coordinating an orchestra, a chorus, and four vocal soloists. At the time it was an ambitious piece for his age and stage of development as a conductor. Shapiro calls it “one of the first mountains I felt I climbed” and “a game changer.” It is a masterpiece he still loves today. In fact, Shapiro feels that one of the best things about his professional life is having the opportunity to put himself into the mindset of a great composer or into the world of an amazing piece of music. “There are a lot of rewards about the work,” he says. “I think one of the things that actually comes right back to some of my experiences at Dwight is the proximity to greatness.” As a student, Shapiro remembers how exciting it was to be exposed to and to learn from great works of art—whether in literature, music, or the visual arts. Notes Shapiro, “The general respect for masterpieces was so much a part of the fabric of Dwight when I was there—and I think is still there.” The Annual Fund enhances excellence at Dwight-Englewood. Give online at www.d-e.org Spring 2011 11
Page 1 and 2: TODAY S P R I N G 2 0 1 1 Celebrati
Page 3 and 4: HEAD’SMESSAGE A flourishing arts
Page 5 and 6: 12 | 14 | 16 | 20 | 36 | 24 | 28 |
Page 7 and 8: Bob Bakish ’81 (left) with Presid
Page 9 and 10: whose Broadway credits include The
Page 11: One of the School’s six handbell
Page 15 and 16: Spring 2011 13
Page 17 and 18: D-E student artists gathered for a
Page 19 and 20: Chicago Sun-Times. On the web, Zimm
Page 21 and 22: Erica takes a bow after her perform
Page 23 and 24: Debbie Rivera ’11 at the MLK Hono
Page 25 and 26: monthly Dwight School newspaper cal
Page 27 and 28: Alumni Share Advice about Arts Care
Page 31 and 32: Alexander Koren ’12 The competiti
Page 33 and 34: D-E Students Earn National Scholast
Page 35 and 36: D-E Lower School music faculty memb
Page 37 and 38: Dickinson, Hodges Make Basketball H
Page 39 and 40: Woman” by Aretha Franklin. Guitar
Page 42: HEAD’SSERIES Dwight-Englewood Sch
Page 47 and 48: Elizabeth Quarles Ryden has been li
Page 49 and 50: the year, she and Gib travelled to
Page 51 and 52: E 63 Class Rep: Dr. Charles E. Kord
Page 53 and 54: Dave Yarock wins! D 71 Class Reps:
Page 55 and 56: 81 Class Rep: Kenneth Lenskold Emai
Page 57 and 58: 95 Class Rep: Nirupama Nukalapati 1
Page 59 and 60: INMEMORIAM Dwight-Englewood notes w
Page 61 and 62: BULLDOGBOOKSHELF If you are a D-E a
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We Want You Back! Join Us For These
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Celebrating the Arts - Dwight-Englewood School

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