Gerald M. Shapiro is an American composer of acoustic and electronic music.

Shapiro studied first at the Eastman School of Music

Eastman School of Music

The Eastman School of Music is a music conservatory located in Rochester, New York. The Eastman School is a professional school within the University of Rochester...

, where he received a Bachelor of Music degree with distinction in 1964. He then did graduate work at Mills College

Mills College

Mills College is an independent liberal arts women's college founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men. Located in Oakland, California, Mills was the first women's college west of the Rockies. The institution was initially founded...

, where he received an M.A. in 1967, the University of California, Davis

University of California, Davis

The University of California, Davis is a public teaching and research university established in 1905 and located in Davis, California, USA. Spanning over , the campus is the largest within the University of California system and third largest by enrollment...

, the San Francisco Tape Music Center, and in Paris at the Conservatoire Nationale de Musique and the Ecole Normal Superieure de Musique. His principal composition teachers were Darius Milhaud

Darius Milhaud

Darius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...

, Morton Subotnick

Morton Subotnick

Morton Subotnick is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his Silver Apples of the Moon, the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch...

, Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...

, Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...

, and Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...

. Since 1967 he has taught at Brown University

Brown University

Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

, where he is currently Professor of Music. His compositions have been performed throughout the United States and Europe, and are recorded on the Naxos and Neuma labels.

Compositions (selective list)

• Antiphonies I, for piano and tape (1965)
• Winter Birch, for interactive audience participation and live electronics (1972)
• The Voice of the Dharma, for a capella choir (1978)
• Nocturne, for chamber orchestra (1981)
• Phoenix, for vocal quartet and live electronics (1987)
• Trio No. 1, for violin, cello, and piano (1993)
• In Time's Shadow, for orchestra (1994)
• String Quartet No. 2 (1994)
• Epithalamium, for string quartet (1997)
• Mouvements perpetuels, for percussion quartet (1998)
• Trio No. 2, for violin, cello, and piano (2004)

External links

• Composer's Brown University webpage