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ALEXANDER PLATT has forged a unique, adventurous
career among the younger American conductors. He is Music Director
of the Waukesha Symphony in Wisconsin and the Marion Indiana
Philharmonic, and recently concluded twelve years as Music Director
of the Racine Symphony Orchestra; to all three ensembles he
has brought an unprecedented combination of artistic, educational,
and financial success. Alexander is also Resident Conductor
and Music Advisor at Chicago Opera Theater, recently recognized
as one of America's most inventive opera companies. Making an
international reputation "at the front rank of Britten conductors"
(The Financial Times), he recently led the triumphant Chicago
premieres of Britten's DEATH IN VENICE and A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S
DREAM; in 2006-8 he leads the Chicago premieres of John Adams'
NIXON IN CHINA and Britten's OWEN WINGRAVE, along with the classic
double-bill of BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE and ERWARTUNG. A successful
Cedille Records artist at a time of privation for the industry,
Alexander conducted the world premiere recording of Kurka's
THE GOOD SOLDIER SCHWEIK for that label, to near-unanimous praise,
and is now winning accolades for his new recording with violinist
Rachel Barton and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He also spends
his summers as Music Director of the Maverick Concerts in Woodstock,
New York, the oldest summer chamber-music festival in America;
there he follows in the footsteps of such legendary musicians
as William Kroll, Leon Barzin and Georges Barrere as conductor,
artistic director and host.
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In all these efforts Alexander Platt has
been hailed for his ability to weave his roles as educator and
musical evangelist into his work. Examples of this are his enduring
visiting professorship at Carthage College; his new "Success
Through Music" program at the Waukesha Symphony, for underserved
youth in Waukesha and Milwaukee, building on twelve years of
extraordinary educational growth in Racine; at Chicago Opera
Theater, his leading the world premieres of both the Tony Kushner/Maurice
Sendak BRUNDIBAR and his own adaptation of Tchaikovsky's IOLANTA,
working with a broad spectrum of young singers from Chicago
neighborhoods; his frequent appearances on Chicago's WFMT; and
everywhere, his widely-admired pre-performance talks from the
concert stage. Further projects in broadcasting are now in the
planning stages.
Alexander Platt was educated at Yale College,
where he graduated winning most of the major music prizes, and
later, as a Marshall Scholar, at King's College Cambridge; while
at Cambridge he reconstructed the lost Chamber Version of the
Mahler Fourth Symphony, which has since become a classic of
the repertoire.
At Yale he was resident conductor at the
Yale Center for British Art, a relationship culminating in a
production of Britten's LUCRETIA with members of the New York
City Opera; at Cambridge he conducted both the Cambridge University
Opera and Musical Societies, winning high praise in the London
press for his revival of OWEN WINGRAVE. He spent his summers
as a Conducting Fellow at both Aspen and Tanglewood, and secured
his first post as Apprentice Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra,
the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Minnesota Opera. Along
with those ensembles, Alexander has also guest-conducted the
Houston, Charlotte and Columbus Symphonies, the City of London
Sinfonia, the Freiburg Philharmonic in Germany, and the Aalborg
Symphony in Denmark, which he led in a highly-successful Mahler-week.
Along with recording for the BBC, the South-West German Radio,
and NPR's "Performance Today", his work has been praised in
Opera News, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and
the great newspapers of New York, London and Chicago.
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