Harold S. Shapero

Harold S. Shapero

Fellow: Awarded 1946
Field of Study: Music Composition
Fellow: Awarded 1947
Field of Study: Music Composition

Competition: US & Canada

Born in 1920, Harold Shapero has lived most of his life in the Boston area, graduating from Harvard University in 1941. Mr. Shapero has studied composition with Nicholas Slonimsky (1936), Ernst Krenek (1937), Walter Piston (1938), Paul Hindemith (1940), and Nadia Boulanger (1942). He was composer in residence at the American Academy in Rome in 1970. As a composer, he has earned the Rome Prize, the Bearns Prize, a Naumburg Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships (1946, 1947), and a Fulbright Fellowship. A fine pianist, he has given premieres of most of his keyboard and chamber works. Mr Shapero has received commissions from the Koussevitsky Foundation, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the American Jewish Tercentenary, the Louisville Symphony Orchestra,, the Ford Foundation, and George Balanchine and the New York City Ballet Company. A recent revival of his Symphony for Classical Orchestra by conductor Andre Previn has led to performances of this work by the Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Jacksonville, and London symphony orchestras. For over thirty years he served on the music faculty at Brandeis University, directing its Electronic Music Studio, and teaching theory and composition. Currently retired, he lives in Natick, Massachusetts.

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