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Alex Klein

Alex Klein was the longtime principal oboist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and has made many recordings. He is the artistic director of several festivals and has continued to perform and record, including the album When There Are No Words... Revolutionary Works for Oboe and Piano in 2022. Klein was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1964 and grew up in the city of Curitiba. He was immediately attracted to the oboe but did not have the wherewithal to obtain an instrument immediately. So at age nine, he started on the recorder and also began the difficult task of mastering the oboe's temperamental reed, practicing that at home without the instrument to the annoyance of neighbors. Soon, he was making rapid progress; at 11, he joined the Brazilian chamber ensemble Camerata Antigua. Klein performed widely in Brazil as a teenager. He then moved to the U.S. for studies at the Oberlin Conservatory with James Caldwell, earning a bachelor's degree in music and an artist diploma. Prizes helped his career along, including those at the Lucarelli International Competition for Solo Oboe Players at New York's Carnegie Hall and the 1988 International Competition for Musical Performers Geneva International Music Competition in Geneva, Switzerland (where he was the first oboist to win first prize since the famed Heinz Holliger). Klein taught at the University of Washington and performed in the Seattle area from 1992 to 1994. In 1995, he became the principal oboist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and moved to Chicago. In addition to recording many albums with the orchestra, Klein began to make solo albums on the Cedille label; in 1999, he released his debut, Oboe Concertos of the Classical Era, with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra under conductor Paul Freeman. In 2002, he snared a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Performance for the Chicago Symphony's recording of Richard Strauss' Oboe Concerto. Klein also appeared with other orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and the Chicago Sinfonietta, but during this period, he began to suffer the effects of focal dystonia. He resigned his Chicago Symphony chair in 2005 but continued to perform and record, adjusting his playing to compensate for the problems caused by the disorder. A recording of Vivaldi oboe concertos appeared on Cedille in 2010. Klein returned to the Chicago Symphony in 2016 but departed once again the following year. In 2018, he became the principal oboist of the Calgary Philharmonic; he continued to hold that position as of the early 2020s. In 2019, joined by regular accompanist Phillip Bush, Klein released the album Twentieth Century Oboe Sonatas on Cedille; it was followed in 2022 by When There Are No Words... Revolutionary Works for Oboe and Piano. Klein has taught at Oberlin College and Northwestern University. He is the artistic director of festivals in Brazil, the U.S., and the French Antilles.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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Discography

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