Alex Shapiro (b. 1962) is hard to put in a box. Born and bred in New York City, she now resides on the remote San Juan Island in Washington State. Amidst ocean views, she maintains a sophisticated digital music studio. She is a pioneer of concert music with electronics, yet she was drawn to this type of music after many years in the TV and film industry. This background gave her training in digital media, but also brought her an opportunity to reconnect with chamber music. She is an advocate for composers of all stripes, having served on multitudinous boards and committees, and she is a sparkling personality. She gives her own “30-second overview” as follows:
Composer Alex Shapiro 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 music writing, arts advocacy, public speaking, wildlife photography, and the shameless instigation of insufferable puns on Facebook, has led to a happy life. Drawing from a broad musical palette that giddily ignores genre, Alex’s acoustic and electroacoustic works are published by Activist Music LLC, performed and broadcast daily, and can be found on nearly thirty commercial releases from record labels around the world.
See MUCH more at her website, particularly on her bio page.
Tight Squeeze (2013) was commissioned by Composers and Schools in Concert, with several consortium members who are listed on Shapiro’s website. It was written for an adaptable wind ensemble with an electronic track (details on Shapiro’s ideal setup for the electronics are also on her website). She explains it as follows, on both her website and in the score:
TIGHT SQUEEZE might best be described by the following suggestion: imagine Arnold Schoenberg, Henry Mancini, and Charlie Parker walking into a techno rave club in Havana. And, staying for at least three minutes.
On the heels of composing PAPER CUT, which pairs a wind band with not only an electronic track but a ream of printer paper, I knew I wanted to create another even more uptempo, groove-oriented piece that would be fun for fidgety teenagers with the attention spans of diabetic gnats. Okay, even fun for calmer musicians. Unexpectedly, that turned out to feature a twelve-tone row theme– possibly the world’s first for high school band, at least this far west of Vienna.
Initially the melody only had eight notes. When I noticed that none repeated themselves, I decided to go for broke, in a tip of the hat to my beloved 90-year old German composition teacher Ursula Mamlok, who was a renowned serialist during the earlier years of her career. The only serialism I’ve ever been interested in is granola, but I had a good time with this little tone row, which I paired with a techno-rock-infused percussion groove and electric bass line (yeah, I know, Schoenberg did that first), plus a few Latin rhythms and a hint of jazz. Voila: Electroacoustic Twelve-tone Techno Latin Bebop.
The twelve pitches are first introduced in all their chromatic glory at bars 7-10, and they reappear in different keys throughout the piece. The music, however, is not really in any key at all, since I only think in terms of keys if I’m locked out of my car. And if I were locked out of my car, this is probably the kind of thing I’d be hearing in my head while frantically trying to get back in.
Which leads to the title, which has nothing to do with my car. It has everything to do with a young gull who landed on a rock in front of my desk window as I was finishing this music, with a sizable flounder uh, floundering in his clamped beak. The rather goofy-looking bird was having a challenging time figuring out how to swallow his windfall. I said to the bird, “Wow, tight squeeze!”, and immediately realized that all these notes that were cramming the score page would soon be squeezing through the students’ instruments, as snugly as a fat flounder in a gull’s mouth. I also realized that talking to birds is pointless; they make lousy conversationalists.
This performance lets you follow along with the score:
This live performance shows the party atmosphere Shapiro has in mind for the end:
Here is a virtual performance from 2020:
Shapiro talks about Tight Squeeze in an interview:
Foremost among the web resources for Tight Squeeze is Shapiro’s website. It is also featured on J. W. Pepper, the Wind Repertory Project, and Hal Leonard. See more about Alex Shapiro on Wikipedia, ASCAP (where she is on the board of directors), Kalvos, Music Academy Online, the Future of Music Coalition, New Music USA, and of course, her richly detailed website.