Alexander Platt

Born in New York City and raised in Connecticut, Alexander Platt was educated at Yale College, where he was resident conductor at the Yale Center for British Art and graduated winning most of the major music prizes. Awarded a British Marshall Scholarship, he then spent three years at King’s College Cambridge, where he led all of the important university musical societies, made his professional conducting debut at Aldeburgh, reconstructed the lost chamber version of the Mahler Fourth Symphony (now published by Josef Weinberger in London), and recieved high praise in the London press for his revival of Britten’s late opera Owen Wingrave. During this time he was also a Conducting Fellow at both the Aspen Festival and at Tanglewood, studying with Knussen, Meier, and Simon Rattle. Following Cambridge he served as apprentice conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, the St Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Minnesota Opera, where his conducting of Colin Graham’s production of Madama Butterfly won him high acclaim.

Along with his work as Conductor-in-Residence at Chicago Opera Theater, with whom next year he will lead the Chicago premiere of Britten’s Death in Venice, Mr Platt is Music Director of both the Racine and Waukesha Symphonies in Wisconsin and the Marion Indiana Philharmonic, all three of which he has completely transformed, as well as the Maverick Concerts in Woodstock, New York, the oldest summer music festival in the United States. He has guest-conducted the Houston Symphony, the Charlotte Symphony, the Columbus Symphony, the Freiburg Philharmonic in Germany, and on several occasions the Aalborg Symphony in Denmark, with whom he led a highly successful Mahler-week. He has led the U.S. premieres of works by Britten, Rorem, Shostakovich, and Judith Weir, has recorded for National Public Radio, the South-West German Radio, and the BBC, and has earned acclaim for his work in Opera News, The New York Times, The London Independent, The Wall Street Journal, and the Chicago Tribune.