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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. |
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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