Alex Shapiro
Alex Shapiro composes genre-defying acoustic and electroacoustic pieces known for their lyricism and drama. Her many works for diverse ensembles are heard daily in concerts and broadcasts, and are found on over forty commercial recordings from around the world. Ms. Shapiro holds the Symphonic & Concert writer seat on the Board of Directors of ASCAP, is an officer on the ASCAP Foundation board, and serves on the boards of The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and the Music Publishers Association of the United States, representing her company Activist Music LLC. Born and raised in Manhattan, Alex moved to Los Angeles in 1983, and in 2007 relocated to Washington State's remote San Juan Island. Her holistic approach to a happy life in the arts in which music, nature, technology, multimedia, and business acumen join with her commitment to the wellbeing of others, can be experienced through social media and her website, www.alexshapiro.org.
As I sculpted BREATHLESS, I pondered the allure of contrast; a cinematic sense of dystopian isolation that eventually arrives at unabashed lushness. Single notes on the piano are hesitantly struck as though they might have lost their way. Those fragile utterances ultimately blossom to flowing passages that sound as though they require twenty fingers, not ten, to play.
The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything. Quarantine had many of us repeating what often felt like the same day, over and over. Here, a simple theme of twelve pitches repeats nine times, painfully slowly, always in the same order. Unnatural and two-dimensional, the internet nonetheless united us in spite of our collective detachment. Loneliness comprises the first two-thirds of this music.
And then, something shifts. The audio track melts away. The pianist is released from technology's unrelenting quarantine of a metronome lashing them to sonic patterns, and finally given free expression. Phrases climb upward from uncertainty, but there is no resolution. Humans are not capable of it. But there can be hope, and breath.