Paul Sportelli is the new music director at the Shaw Festival in Niagara on-the-Lake, Ontario, replacing the retiring Christopher Donison. The appointment was announced Dec. 2. Sportelli will oversee live and recorded musical elements of festival productions on three stages. He will conduct the summer 1999 Gershwin musical, A Foggy Day.
Sportelli, 37, a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, was musical director for various Toronto shows, including Les Miserables, Beauty and the Beast, Miss Saigon and the Broadway production of Aspects of Love.
He is also the composer of Rebel: The James Dean Musical, and plays keyboards and writes for the group j-paul, which just released a self-titled CD.
Donison, who served 18 years as Shaw musical director, will work on independent projects.
-- By Kenneth Jones
