Alexander Platt is an American symphony orchestra conductor. He is the Resident Conductor and Music Advisor for Chicago Opera Theater and is presently the Music Director for Maverick Concerts, the Wisconsin Philharmonic, the Marion Indiana Philharmonic, The La Crosse Symphony Orchestra and the Greater Grand Forks Symphony Orchestra. He has conducted or guest conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany and Canada.
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Beginning with apprentice conductor assignments with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Minnesota Opera, Alexander Platt went on to conduct the Marion Indiana Philharmonic, the Waukesha Symphony Orchestra and the Racine Symphony Orchestra. In 1997 he made a debut with Chicago Opera Theater conducting Mozart's Don Giovanni and was appointed resident conductor and music advisor in 2000. Over the following decade he led Chicago premieres of such challenging 20th-century masterworks as John Adams' Nixon in China, Britten’s Death in Venice and A Midsummer Night's Dream; the Chicago stage premiere of Schoenberg's Erwartung; and the world premiere recording of Kurka's The Good Soldier Schweik.[1] He was recently selected as the 13th conductor of the La Crosse Symphony[2] and appointed the music director at the Greater Grand Forks Symphony Orchestra.
Alexander Platt was a research scholar for the National Endowment for the Humanities before entering college. He was educated at Yale University and a conducting fellow at Aspen and Tanglewood. He received a British Marshall Scholarship to attend King’s College Cambridge and as a conductor of the Cambridge University Opera Society he led a revival of Britten’s neglected Owen Wingrave. He made his professional debut at the Aldeburgh Festival and his London debut at the Wigmore Hall. During that time he reconstructed the lost chamber version of the Mahler Fourth Symphony, which has gone on to become a classic of the repertoire.