Conducting rehearsal of Mahler's Symphony No.4 with Seattle Symphony orchestra. Photos by Ben VanHouten

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Alexander has been commissioned to compose LA Opera’s new opera:
http://media.laopera.com/news/2011/09/09/meet-alexander-prior/
 

Biography

Conductor and Composer Alexander Prior (b.1992) is surely amongst the most remarkable young talents to have emerged in recent times.

He has recently completed his term as an Assistant Conductor for the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.  Within a few months Alexander had already lead the orchestra in an open rehearsal of Mahler's 4 th Symphony and conducted five educational concerts of “Peter and the Wolf”. In this position he assisted conductors including Thomas Dausgaard, Robert Spano, Andrew Manze, Vassily Sinaisky, James Gaffigan, Itzhak Perlman and Ludovic Morlot.

Alexander was awarded The James Levine Conducting Fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Centre for the summer of 2010 where he shared the podium with conductors such as Michael Tilson Thomas, Rafael Frubeck de Burgos, Herbert Blomstedt, Robert Spano and Stefan Asbury. His performances were met with great critical acclaim, and drew attention from leading papers and critics of the Boston area.

Alexander made his UK conducting debut with The National Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican in March 2007, receiving an immediate re-invitation to conduct the orchestra in April 2008.
Recent highlights include concerts with the Northern Sinfonia, the result of a re-invitation after music broadcast from Channel 4 UK; conducting the Royal Philharmonic at The Barbican, London, including his own music, and music by John Adams, work with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and concerts with the New World Symphony in Miami.

His ballet and operatic achievements are particularly impressive. In Russia, he has developed a close relationship conducting the Rubenstein Opera and Ballet and Cheboksary National Opera and Ballet where performances included La Traviata, The Tsar’s Bride, Dido and Aeneas, Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Eugene Onegin. Recent collaborations also include Bolshoi Opera, Moscow State Ballet and Peking National Opera. Festival appearances include ‘Bethlehem Star’ Music Festival, St Petersburg and the International Opera Festival, Moscow.
His work with Opera and Ballet is now rapidly expanding throughout Europe and North America.

Alexander is scheduled in the near future, amongst other things, to conduct the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, The Royal Danish Orchestra, The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, The Hong Kong chamber Symphony, The Las Vegas Philharmonic, The Dallas Symphony Orchestra, The Northwest Mahler Festival Orchestra and the National String Youth Orchestra of Britain as well as several other smaller ensembles. He has also been appointed as chief conductor of the 2010 Northwest Mahler Festival – which is a Seattle-based summer-festival, which runs for two weeks that performs concerts cantered around Mahler, but this season will also include music by Nielsen and Uuno Klami. He is also currently becoming in demand with orchestras in the Nordic Countries.
His symphonic repertoire is broad and encompasses boroque, early classical, late romantic and contemporary works.

As a composer, he has an enviable number of works to his name that span a variety of genres from chamber works to large-scale operas. At the age of 12, he was commissioned by the Moscow State Ballet to write Mowgli, which was soon premiered at the Kremlin to great international acclaim. He has since found his compositions premiered in some of the world’s greatest concert halls, most recently Horizons (2010) at London’s Barbican with the Royal Philharmonic and ‘Gogol’ (2009), his latest symphony, with the St Petersburg State Academic Symphony Orchestra and Choir. He has also seen the premieres of Svyatogor’s Quest (at the Wigmore Hall with the Sitkovetsky Trio) and the world premiere UK tour of his choral cantata, Sounds of the Homeland.

Alexander is the recipient of numerous Awards, including 2nd prize at the Leeds conducting competition at the age of 16, and before that the International Prokoffiev Composition Competition. He was in the top six in the Mahler conducting competition 2010.
In Russia he was awarded the order of The Blue Cross, for his contribution to the national and internaional arts scene, and for his charitable work within music, bringing music and the oppertunities it offers to countless people, particularly children and teenagers in the poorest areas of the country.
He has also received the Patriarch of Russia's Cultural Award for his services to the arts.

One of Alexander's priorities is outreach, working with and bringing the joys of music to young people, and to those who otherwise would not have been exposed to it.  
Alexander is dedicated to working with young musicians, and has conducted both Youth orchestras and Youth Opera companies and is often give talks/workshops for young people and is regularly asked to adjudicate for young performer and youth orchestras competitions.

As a composer his works have been performed by many leading orchestras and ensembles, including his Ballet Mowgli, which ran under his baton in The Kremlin , Moscow with the New Opera Orchestra; and his orchestral piece "Horizons: An American Crescendo” with The Royal Philharmonic. He recently conducted the premier of his 4th symphony “Gogol” with the Saint-Petersburg State Academic symphony orchestra.

In 2009, at just 17, Alexander graduated with Distinction two Masters-Degrees in Symphonic and Operatic Conducting, and in Composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, studying opera and symphonic conducting with Alexander Alexeev and composition with Anatoly Korolev.



• “Prior is on the express track for a potentially meteoric rise… Unlike many conductors, he avoided the trap of sentimentalizing the love music and, near the end, he drew an amazing organ-like sonority out of the winds during the entombment and death scene… drawing out all the febrile intensity in the score”
The Berkshire Living Magazine

• “Prior is an absolute professional… no longer a Wunderkind,
He is on the way to being a Wonder-adult”.
The Independent

• "The light lifting of (Strauss’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) was addressed with brio and humor, and the orchestra and crowd loved him!... Prior brought forth in the gracious “Entrance of Cleonte” an unusual hymn-like string ensemble…(In the Finale) Prior’s conducting accurately and expressively characterized the stiff formalities, martial posturing, and churlish children, cooking up a mouth-watering array of savories...."
The Boston Musical Intelligencer

• “…(the Strauss) was conducted with wit and panache”
Andrew Pincus, The Berkshire Eagle

• “I must report that he’s rather good conductor… his four years of conducting studies at the St Petersburg Conservatory have given him a sophisticated technique”.
Richard Morrison, The Times

• “Britain’s teenage conducting phenomenon!”
Adam Sweeting, Telegraph

• “… one of the most exciting prospects we’ve seen for long time”
The Yorkshire Post

• “Prior's movements seemed to will the sun to rise… Prior and the musicians gave it a wild life, from infectiously toe-tapping to explosive…”
The Las Vegas Review-Journal, Julia Osborne.

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If you would like to buy Alexander's CDs and DVDs - click here