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World Premiere of Michael Shapiro's Voices of the Holocaust' comes to NYC's Central Synagogue / BroadwayWorld

BroadwayWorld's Stephi Wild writes……The World Premiere of Michael Shapiro's VOICES is set to take place at New York City's famed Central Synagogue, Thursday, November 10, 2022 (652 Lexington Avenue, E. 55th Street). Tickets for the concert are free and available to the public starting Monday, September 12 by registering at the Central Synagogue website. This performance will feature Daniel Mutlu, the Senior Cantor of Central Synagogue, Ember Choral Arts, and the American Modern Ensemble, conducted by Deborah Simpkin King.

The concept for VOICES was born more than twenty years ago when Michael Shapiro served as Music Consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. After reading poetry by Sephardic victims during the Shoah, he wrote the hour-long choral and chamber ensemble as a requiem: "not solely [as] a work of remembrance, but as a warning." The composition is varied in tone and includes hints of cabaret, religious observance, and transcendent echoes that reflect the international impact of the Holocaust on Jewish people from different countries. According to Shapiro, "the composition delivers an ending that bespeaks longing for a Jewish homeland, through which the voices of those stilled by evil and tyranny will be heard."

The video broadcast from Central Synagogue will be live-streamed on its YouTube and Facebook channels, and a recording will be issued through Paumanok Records. The performance marks a creative collaboration between the internationally recognized Ember Choral Arts (formerly Schola Cantorum on Hudson), which has served the Manhattan and New Jersey areas since its founding in 1995, and the American Modern Ensemble (formed by Victoria and Robert Paterson) which spotlights contemporary music via lively programming and performs a wide repertoire, using a robust combination of instrumentalists, vocalists, and conductors.

Michael Shapiro's works have been performed throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe-with broadcasts of premieres on National Public Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Israel Broadcasting Authority, Sender Freies Berlin, WQXR, and WCBS-TV. His music, which spans across all media, has been characterized in a New York Times review as "possessing a rare melodic gift." His oeuvre includes more than 100 works for solo voice, piano, chamber ensembles, chorus, orchestra, as well as for opera, film, and television, with recordings on Naxos and Paumanok Records.

Michael Shapiro has collaborated with such artists as Teresa Stratas, Jose Ferrer, Janos Starker, Sir Malcolm Arnold, Marin Alsop, Sergiu Comissiona, Jerry Junkin, Paul Shaffer, Eugene Drucker, Kim Cattrall, Tim Fain, Gottfried Wagner, Alexis Cole, Edward Arron, Jerome Rose, Mariko Anraku, Elliott Forrest, Steven Beck, Ariadne Greif, John Fullam, Captain Kenneth Collins, Jose Ramos Santana, Clamma Dale, Anita Darian, Florence Levitt, Kikuei Ikeda, Ayako Yoshida, Harris Poor, John Edward Niles, David Leibowitz, Robert Tomaro, Anthony LaGruth, Kathryn Amyotte, James Allen Anderson, Matthew Thomas Troy, Sarah McKoin, Albert Nguyen, Kevin Suetterlin, David Kehler, Jeffery Meyer, Glen Hemberger, Diva Goodfriend-Koven, and Emily Wong, and organizations such as the BBC National Symphony of Wales, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony Orchestra, Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Charleston Symphony Orchestra, United States Navy Band, West Point Band, Royal Canadian Air Force Band, Dallas Winds, Dragefjetts Musikkorps, St. Petersburg (Russia) Chamber Philharmonic, Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Traverse Symphony Orchestra, New York Repertory Orchestra, Beloit Janesville Symphony, Garden State Philharmonic, Piedmont Wind Symphony, Opera Theatre of Northern Virginia, Westchester Concert Singers, International Opera Center at the Z?rich Opera, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Israel Broadcasting Authority, Sender Freies Berlin, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, National Public Radio (NPR), WCBS-TV, WQXR Radio, Milken Archive of Jewish Music, American Jewish Committee, Hawthorne String Quartet, Locrian Chamber Ensemble, Amernet String Quartet, Artemis, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Festspillene i Bergen (Bergen International Festival), and Dateline NBC, and universities in New York, Texas, Minnesota, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Arizona, Illinois, Louisiana, Ohio, Delaware, Florida, Nebraska, Georgia, and Tennessee.

Michael Shapiro guest conducts internationally and is Laureate Conductor of The Chappaqua Orchestra in New York's Westchester County, which he conducted for the world premiere of his score for the classic 1931 film Frankenstein (directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff and Colin Clive) (since its premiere the work has received over 40 productions internationally), as well as for the world premiere of his own orchestral work, Roller Coaster, which received its West Coast premiere under the baton of Marin Alsop at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music while Shapiro was a composer in residence. He served for two years as the music consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where he produced and performed music by a number of composers who were either murdered by the Germans and their collaborators or had survived as refugees from the Third Reich. He has also been the assistant conductor at the Zurich Opera Studio.

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