May, 2012: Members of The MacDowell Colony's Board of Directors and National Council will be visiting Cuba on a humanitarian and cultural arts mission, and Alex has been invited to join the trip as MacDowell's artist ambassador.

A 2003 MacDowell Fellow and current Board member, Alex will meet with cultural organizations, patrons, and Cuban artists of all disciplines, discussing the value of the artist residencies the Colony provides, and encouraging international participation.

February, 2012: Alex's newest chamber sextet, PERPETUAL SPARK, was heard in six Chicago-area concerts throughout February and into March, ably premiered by familiar partners to her musical crimes, Fifth House Ensemble.

Dedicated to the late Mara Bershad, this piece for flute/piccolo, violin, viola, cello, double bass and piano, originally came to life as SPARK for solo piano, premiered by Teresa McCollough in New York City in November 2011.

December, 2011: Alex's music is the soundtrack for REFLECTION, the latest short video from artist Grimanesa Amoros. The video was premiered in December 2011 at the International Streaming Festival, Sixth Edition at the Hague in the Netherlands. It will also be screening in Milan, Italy, on Video Art World, and will be included in Amoros's 2013 Video Retrospective in Lima, Peru. An excerpt of the video can be seen here

December, 2011: You can read a recent interview Alex gave to the terrific organization, Composers & Schools in Concert, to get a sense of her enthusiasm about professional musicians working with young students. Click here for the article

August, 2011: Alex has been honored by the national music fraternity Mu Phi Epsilon with its highest award, the Award of Merit. Citing "her dedication to new music composition and activism for the arts," the award, given to a member biannually, was presented at the Mu Phi Epsilon National Convention held at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. To read the lovely inscription on the placque, click here

March 14-17, 2012: Alex attended the College Band Directors National Association, Western/Northwestern Division Conference in Reno, where conductor Chris Chapman and the Oregon State University Wind Ensemble performed her work for symphonic wind band and prerecorded soundscape, Beneath, from the Immersion suite.

February 15-March 2, 2012: Alex was the in-studio guest on Marvin Rosen's celebrated new music radio show, Classical Discoveries. Archived audio of their exceptionally wide-spanning, entertaining, conversation will be posted here soon.

Here's what Marvin has to say about it on his delightful blog, Marvin the Cat.

To hear some of Alex's other interviews, click here

September 19-22
October 24-28
November 15-18
December 4-8, 2011

February 13-16
March 3-7
June 10-13
September 18-22
December 11-13, 2012

Alex is in Manhattan regularly for a variety of board and client meetings, speaking engagements, and for premieres like the one for Spark, performed at Roulette on November 17, 2011 by Teresa McCollough.

Listen to an excerpt of McCollough's live premiere performance of Spark: 

Skypehearsals:

Alex loves residencies, in which she spends a few days at a university and gives master classes, private composition lessons, lectures on the changing paradigm of the music business, and attends rehearsals and performances of her music. But when budgets and schedules don't allow for travel, Skype has become the next best thing.

Whether for a concert wind band piece or chamber work, Skype is a great tool for bringing Alex into your rehearsal of her music. Her live feedback is valuable, and musicians love it when Alex turns her camera around to show them a source of her inspiration: the sea at her feet, with the occasional Bald eagle or Orca whale gliding past. The welcome technology brings an entirely new and unique dimension into the art of collaborative music-making.

A Jan. 2012 Skypehearsal with Alex in her studio on San Juan Island, and guest conductor Jerry Luckhardt on the podium at Oregon State University, rehearsing BENEATH.

February 7, 2012: Alex is honored to be a very small part of a beautiful film titled Shining Night, about the life and music of composer Morten Lauridsen. Winner of Best Documentary at the D.C. Independent Film Festival, the film was directed by Michael Stillwater, and has been screening at festivals in the U.S. and Europe prior to the wide release of the DVD. You can enjoy a trailer of the film here

Shining Night is an official selection of the American Documentary Film Festival, and a special prelude screening event was held at the Camelot Theater in Palm Springs, California, on February 7, 2012. Alex, Morten Lauridsen and filmmaker Michael Stillwater were in attendance. Click here for more info

February 5, 2012: Alex was back in the saddle at the popular Composer Salon series that she co-founded in 2000 with composer Kubilay Uner. She moderated the 43rd Salon, which included a milestone 150th composer guest since the series began. Pictured at right is a 2007 Salon that included Pulitzer winning composer Steven Stucky, plus Tony award winning performer Alice Ripley performing the music of Michael Roth.)

Indie opera company The Industry, virtuoso pipa player Jie Ma, and television/game/film composer Bear McCreary, presented their recent work to a room of music-making peers in an intimate loft recording studio in Venice, CA. Additional photos from past Composer Salons can be found on host Giovanna Imbesi's Tuttomedia Studio website.

January 5, 2012: Alex returned for the third year in a row to speak at the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, where she joined composers Aaron Jay Kernis, Steven Stucky, Stephen Paulus and Frankk J. Oteri for a panel discussion about composer's careers titled, Connecting with Your Communities.

December 14-18, 2011: Alex was at the enormous Midwest Clinic, where her groundbreaking electroacoustic wind band piece, Paper Cut, was performed by The VanderCook College of Music Symphonic Band, conducted by Charles Menghini. Click on the VanderCook graphic to see the full program.

Listen to an excerpt of the University of Minnesota Symphonic Band's recording of Paper Cut: 

November 18, 2011: Alex was on Vashon Island, to attend a performance of her new Intermezzo for Cello and Piano, performed by Rowena Hammill and Cristina Valdes as part of the Vashon Chamber Music Series.

Listen to an excerpt of the duo's live performance of Intermezzo: 

November 6-8, 2011: Alex was a featured guest composer-in-residence at the Aries Festival 2011: New Music at Colorado State, at Colorado State University, where her chamber work Desert Thoughts and one of her newest electroacoustic symphonic wind band pieces, Surface, were performed. Alex is pictured to the right with CSU conductor Christopher Nicholas.

Listen to an excerpt of the Minnesota University Symphonic Band's live performance of Surface: 

Alex also presented another ASCAP Composer Career Workshop with composer colleague Stephen Paulus during her visit, and they also gave composition master classes and joined in panel discussions about musical entrepreneurship.

October 17, 2011: Alex joined attorney and publisher Jim Kendrick and composer Stephen Paulus as the trio conducted an ASCAP Composer Career Workshop at the USC Thornton School of Music. For details about the workshop, click here.

October 6, 2011: Alex joined composers Hummie Mann and Jeff Tolbert in Seattle, as a judge at the awards dinner for the Local Sightings Film Festival, sponsored by the Northwest Film Forum. For information about the festival, click here.

June 4, 2011: The renowned Friday Harbor Laboratories hosted a great evening of dinner and music called Jazz at the Labs, and raised funds to benefit its K-12 Science Outreach Program, connecting young people with the same squishy marine life that gets Alex so excited on her blog! Alex serves on the Labs' advancement board, and time with her in her studio was one of the items successfully auctioned off that evening.

Even though the event is over, you can still participate: if you donate $200 to this important educational program, you'll receive a personalized copy of Alex's Notes From the Kelp CD, and best of all, an invitation to her remote waterfront studio, where you can hear what she's working on and see the wildlife that swims and wriggles in front of her while she composes-- including migrating pods of Orca whales! Alex is known to be adept at opening bottles of wine, too, so consider making a donation to this great cause by sending an email to this address

May 19-21, 2011: Alex was the featured composer at the Vashon Island Chamber Music Festival, where two of her string quartets, Introspect, and Five Squared, were beautifully performed in a bucolic setting just outside of Seattle by the Odeon Quartet.

Listen to an excerpt from
the Odeon Quartet's live performance of
Introspect: 

Listen to an excerpt from
the Odeon Quartet's live performance of
Five Squared: 

May 23-24, 2011: Alex was in Manhattan to be one of the presenters of awards to young composers at the ASCAP Concert Music Awards. Also that week was a board meeting of The MacDowell Colony, and a MacDowell benefit dinner celebrating its new Board Chairman, author Michael Chabon, who takes the helm following journalist Robert MacNeil's 17 years of leadership for the organization.

May 2, 2011: Alex was in New York to attend the American Music Center Awards, honoring composer John Harbison, the ensemble So Percussion, Copland House, and the Walden School, and also to attend the AMC board meeting prior to the organization's merger with Meet the Composer, forming New Music USA.

April 21, 2011: In March, Alex was in NYC for rehearsals with Lunatics at Large, as they prepared the new sextet they commissioned from Alex for The Sanctuary Project, titled Unabashedly More, for the first of four scheduled NYC concerts on March 21 at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall. You can listen to an excerpt here:

There were three additional New York City performances: April 8th at 8pm, at Christ and Saint Stephen's Church; April 10th at 7pm, at Synagogue for the Arts; and April 21st at 7:30pm, at WMP Concert Hall.

March 30, 2011: Alex joined attorney and publisher Jim Kendrick and composer Stephen Paulus as the trio conducted a day-long ASCAP Composer Career Workshop at ASCAP's offices at Lincoln Center. This event preceeded the 2011 ASCAP New York Sessions held across town the following day at the 92nd Street Y (from which Alex is proud to announce she earned her nursery school and kindergarten diplomas, back when she was a little shorter). For details about the workshop, click here.

April 28, 2011: Alex joined attorney and publisher Jim Kendrick and composer Stephen Paulus as the trio gave another seminar in their ASCAP Composer Career Workshop series, as part of the 2011 ASCAP I Create Music EXPO, now in its sixth year. For details about the workshop, click here.

Jim Kendrick, Alex Shapiro, Cia Toscanini, Stephen Paulus.

March 23-26, 2011: Alex attended the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA) conference held at the University of Washington, with University of Minnesota conductors Craig Kirchhoff (Paper Cut recording) and Jerry Luckhardt (Immersion premiere). CBDNA's outgoing president is Tom Duffy, who is the director of bands at Yale, where Immersion will have its East coast premiere in the 2012-2013 season.

March 1-4, 2011: Alex was the composer-in-residence for the biannual Athena Festival at Murray State University, celebrating women in music. She gave lectures, keynote speeches, workshops and lessons, and her music was beautifully performed on the chamber music concert.

February 23, 2011: Alex was at The Ohio State University, for a premiere of her newest electroacoustic symphonic wind band work, Immersion, conducted by Dr. Milton Allen and co-commissioned by OSU. Read about this multimedia, multi-movement piece here.

February 21 and 27, 2011: Exactly a year after her February 2009 residency, Alex worked again with composition students at Capital University, where Tony Zilincik conducted Alex's symphonic band piece, Homecoming, on Sunday, February 27.

February 16, 2011: Alex was at the University of Minnesota, for the premiere of her newest electroacoustic symphonic wind band work, Immersion, conducted by Jerry Luckhardt. The premiere was recorded live by Minnesota Public Radio and will be broadcast Fall 2011. Read about this unusual multimedia, multi-movement work and listen to excerpts, here.

On February 18, 2011: Alex was at the Minnesota Music Educators Association Mid-Winter Clinic at the Minneapolis Convention Center, where the Owatonna 9th Grade Band gave a gorgeous multimedia performance of her BandQuest commission, Paper Cut, conducted by Peter Guenther. You can watch it below:

On December 12th 2010, Chicago's classical music station WFMT broadcast an hour-long interview with Symphonic Voyages founder Eric Stassen, hosted by Steve Robinson. They discussed Symphonic Voyages, and the conversation included recordings of two works that were performed on the Celebrity cruise ship Mercury: Alex Shapiro's dectet Archipelago, recorded live at its world premiere performance by Chicago's Fifth House Ensemble, and Cho-Liang Lin’s superb CBS/Sony recording of Mozart’s Violin Concerto no. 4, accompanied by the English Chamber Orchestra and Raymond Leppard.

February 2011: The leading production music library in America, Omnimusic, has launched its latest special collection titled MusicOutsideTheBox, and it includes many tracks of Alex Shapiro's unique and unclassifiable-sounding music, available to license for film, TV, games or corporate and online media.

Immersion

A consortium of universities have commissioned Immersion, a three-movement electroacoustic symphonic band work that had its first premiere in February 2011 at the University of Minnesota. North American premieres continue into 2012, at Yale University, University of British Columbia, and University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. For more info about the project, click here

Spark

Pianist Teresa McCollough gave the premiere performance of Spark in November, 2011, in California and New York City. It's a spirited piece reflecting the memory of the remarkable woman in whose honor it was lovingly commissioned.

Perpetual Spark: the sextet version!

On six concerts in February and March 2012, Chicago's Fifth House Ensemble beautifully premiered the expanded version of Spark, titled Perpetual Spark, scored for flute/piccolo, violin, viola, cello, double bass, and piano.

Unabashedly Said

Palomar premiered Unabashedly Said in Toronto, Ontario on October 1st and 2nd, 2011. The piece is a sextet adapted from Alex's 2006 quartet titled Unabashedly, for flute/piccolo, clarinet, French horn, violin, cello and piano.

Of Song and Touch

Euphonium player Robert Benton will be premiering the sonata Alex has adaptedfor him, Of Song and Touch, and will also premiere a version he's commissioned that will entirely change the essence of the music, adding a prerecorded digital audio track to the euphonium and the piano, and creating an otherworldly piece.

Transplanted

McFish, the duo featuring harpsichordist Kathleen McIntosh and violist Marlow Fisher, will premiere this new duet adapted from Alex's solo organ work, Transplant.

Intermezzo

Flutist Jenni Olson, who recorded Alex's solo piece, Shiny Kiss on a 2006 CD, has joined with harpist Marcia Dickstein and recorded a version of Alex's Intermezzo for bass flute and harp for Olson's 2012 CD on Delos titled, The Dreams of Birds.

Music for Mollusks

Well, that's just the working title of what's possibly Alex's most unusual current commission, in which she will musically represent the scientific data graphs of the life-cycles of mussels from CA, RI and the UK. Renowned marine scientist Emily Carrington will present her research on both U.S. coasts, during which other researchers will get to hear what the data might sound like: in this case, through a recorded suite of short pieces for guitar and digital audio. Truly, a music gig that's custom-suited to Alex's inner marine biologist geek.

Alex is proud to be the 2010 commissioned composer for the longstanding American Composers Forum BandQuest series made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Paper Cut, Alex's ground-breaking electroacoustic work for middle school band that sounds like an action film and has students performing on printer paper as well as on their instruments, was premiered May 25th 2010 by the Friday Harbor High School Concert Band on San Juan Island, WA, with Janet Olsen, director. Paper Cut was recorded by the University of Minnesota symphonic wind ensemble in October 2010, with Craig Kirchhoff conducting.

Listen to Paper Cut:

Alex on the field with U of M conductor Jerry Luckhardt, October 2010.

On the heels of Alex's 2010 electroacoustic wind band piece, Paper Cut, the University of Minnesota was the lead organization in a newly formed consortium of U.S. schools that commissioned Alex to compose a three-movement multi-movement electroacoustic symphonic band work titled Immersion, that premiered in February 2011. The Feb. 16 Minnesota premiere conducted by Jerry Luckhardt, had a multimedia aspect as well, with video and lighting designed by Jay'd Hagberg. The next consortium premiere took place the following week on Feb. 23rd by the symphonic band at The Ohio State University, conducted by Milton Allen.

Other participating institutions include Yale University, The Ohio State University, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, University of British Columbia, Rosemount High School, and Encore Wind Ensemble. To read more about this piece, click here

Paper Cut conductor Craig Kirchhoff and Alex, crumpled ball of paper in hand, at recording session, October 2010.

Alex addresses the audience at the premiere of Homecoming.

Homecoming was commissioned by the United States Army for its acclaimed TRADOC Band of Fort Monroe, VA., led by Commander and conductor, Major Tod A. Addison.

Homecoming premiered March 30, 2008, in Newport News, Virginia. The concert wind band work has since been performed by university bands including Yale University, conducted by Tom Duffy, University of Minnesota, conducted by Jerry Luckhardt, Cal State University San Bernadino, conducted by Dr. Jeffrey Boeckman, University of Puget Sound, conducted by Robert Taylor, and The Ohio State University, with Dr. Milton Allen conducting.

Listen to Homecoming:

Below, Alex's new work for contrabass flute and electronics commissioned by flutist Peter Sheridan, was released on Sheridan's 2009 CD on Australia's Move Records, titled Below: Music for Low Flutes. It was performed by Peter at the 2009 National Flute Association Convention at Times Square in New York City.

Slowly, searching, a solo piano work commissioned by German pianist Susanne Kessel, appears on Kessel's January 2010 CD, An Robert Schumann, an homage to the composer, whose 200th birthday is in 2010. Eight composers were asked to create a piece in response to one of the eight fantasies of Schumann's Op. 16, Kreisleriana, creating a new suite titled Kreisleriana 2010. The CD was recorded at Germany's largest radio station, Deutschlandfunk, and has been released on Germany's Obst record label.

Water Crossing, Alex's widely performed work for clarinet and electronics commissioned by clarinetist F. Gerard Errante, has been released on Errante's 2010 CD for Aucourant Records, titled Delicate Balance.

On January 13th in New York City, Alex joined Mariam Adam of Imani Winds, Le Poisson Rouge club co-founder Justin Kantor, and pianist and owner of MUSICJUSTMUSIC Cornelius Claudio Kreusch to speak on a panel at the NETMCDO conference (Network of Music Career Development Officers) titled, The Real Deal: Musician-Entrepreneurs Tell All.You can read more about the workshops here.

Alex was the sole artist testifying on an FCC panel hearing about broadband access on September 17, 2009. You can read her statement here

Also on the panel were Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of Motion Picture Association of America; Frederick Huntsberry, COO of Paramount Pictures; Michael Bracy, policy director of Future of Music Coalition; Chuck Slocum, assistant executive director of the Writers Guild of America; Mike Carroll, Professor of Law, American University; Gigi Sohn, attorney and founder of Public Knowledge; Patrick Ross, executive director of Copyright Alliance; and Kathy Garmezy, assistant executive director of the Directors Guild of America. The proceedings can be viewed here

The following week, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski quoted Alex's testimony in his keynote address at the Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit in D.C. You can watch his speech and that of Minnesota Senator Al Franken here, via C-SPAN

Alex's challenging thoughts on the new digital paradigm, the internet, free speech and the meaning of net neutrality to all artists, have been published in three January 2010 essays for the online magazine NewMusicBox.

Read The Economy of Exposure: Publicity as Payment? here

Read What I Learned About My Tiny Business From Paramount Pictures here

Read As Important as the Printing Press: Net Neutrality and Artists' Freedom here

Perhaps the very best examples of Alex's writing can be found- along with her beautiful photos and excerpts of her music- on her popular blog, Notes from the Kelp.

Alex is honored to have joined the Board of Directors of The MacDowell Colony, America's oldest and preeminent artist colony, located in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

In 2010, Alex was elected to the Board of Directors of the American Music Center, a long-established national organization that provides advocacy and support for musicians and composers throughout the United States. At the end of 2011, AMC merged with Meet the Composer to become New Music USA, and Alex chairs its Media Council.

Alex is a member of ASCAP's Symphony & Concert Committee, and along with fellow committee members Stephen Paulus, Jennifer Higdon, and Jim Kendrick, has started a U.S. touring series of music business seminars titled, The ASCAP Composer Career Workshop.

In 2010 Alex was elected as the national concert music composer representative to the ASCAP Board of Review.