At this point, I would cut off all the bare wood above the last shoot on each branch, maintaining as symmetical and pleasant a shape as possible on the canopy.

I would definitely also remove any shoots coming up at ground level.

while it does seem to have lost some branches, I would still advise that you wait until July before pruning those branches off. You see, I own a royal purple smoke bush and have noticed they start leafing out from below and slowly work themselves up towards the top. My tops haven't fully flushed out and for sometime I thought they were dead too. Except this week when new buds have started to appear. It is very slowly leafing out and I expect it would be another couple of weeks before it's fully foliated.

Also -- yes, remove new shoots from the bottom--- unless you wish to make it shrub like instead of being tree like.

Thank you. I'll let it develop some more, since it is slow "waking up" in our climate. It is not done with new growth. Little red buds are still appearing outwards from the centre where before there was nothing..

miloga, I'm from Ontario too so I agree it's been very slow to wake up. It's a very interesting tree to observe so far. The branches which I thought had died out looked thin and wrinkly but slowly they started to fill out and buds are just beginning to appear. So wait it out. It's quite a neat shrub.