More about Alex!

Alex Shapiro (b. New York City, 1962) 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 writing, public speaking, arts advocacy volunteerism, wildlife photography, and the shameless instigation of insufferable puns, has led to a happy life. 

Drawing from a broad musical palette that giddily ignores genre, Alex's acoustic and electroacoustic works for small chamber groups and ridiculously large ensembles are performed and broadcast daily, and can be found on nearly forty commercial releases from record labels around the world. Shapiro is known for her innovative uses of technology in concert performance, conjuring a seamless melding of live and recorded sounds in pieces that often encourage striking visual and physical elements. True to the name of her publishing company Activist Music LLC, on occasion Alex chooses to use her works as vessels for impactful messages about environmental and social issues. 

Devoted not only to placing little dots on many pages, but to improving the livelihoods of her peers, Ms. Shapiro has held the sole Symphonic & Concert writer seat on the Board of Directors of ASCAP since 2014. She also serves on the boards of The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and The ASCAP Foundation, of which she is an Officer. In 2022 Alex was elected to the Board of Directors of the Music Publishers Association of the United States as the MPA's first independent member whose company she represents, Activist Music LLC, publishes solely her own catalog. Alex is a former board member of U.S. music organizations including The American Music Center, the American Composers Forum Los Angeles Chapter (of which she was President), The MacDowell Colony, and The Society of Composers & Lyricists (of which she was Vice president). From 2016 to 2019 Shapiro traveled to Japan, Europe, Mexico, and Africa to speak on behalf of ASCAP as its elected representative on the Executive Committee of The International Council of Music Authors (CIAM)— the writers’ council of CISAC, a global network of collective rights management societies representing over 4 million creators in 121 countries. Alex is the creator of Programming Resources, a widely shared webpage of aggregated links that assists conductors in discovering composers from underrepresented backgrounds. 

Educated at The Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music as a student of Ursula Mamlok and John Corigliano, Shapiro moved from Manhattan to Los Angeles in 1983, beginning her career composing for commercial media before switching her focus to the concert music world in the late 90s. In 2007 Alex traded the traffic and wildfires of Malibu for the puddle jumpers and wildlife of Washington State's remote, bridge-less San Juan Island. 

From her home and studio on the water's edge, when Alex isn’t giving guest lectures and webinars on electroacoustic music, copyright, social justice issues, and future technology, or leading webhearsals of her music with ensembles around the world, she procrastinates on her next piece by pointing her camera at anything with paws, claws, hooves, wings, tentacles or fins. The resulting, award-winning photos sometimes find their way into Shapiro's multimedia electroacoustic works as well as her website, where just as on her archived blog, Alex's music and images can be experienced separately, and together.

*pulled from her bio page on her website