Danish-Australian conductor Alexander Colding Smith was a Finalist and the Winner of the Audience Prize at the 2018 Donatella Flick London Symphony Orchestra Conducting Competition, where he made his debut with the LSO at the Barbican Centre. A previous fellow of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra’s Australian Conducting Academy and the Symphony Services International Conductor Development Program, he has conducted the Adelaide, Melbourne, Queensland, Tasmanian Symphony, and Auckland Philharmonia Orchestras, receiving mentorship from conductors including Bernard Labadie and Johannes Fritzsch.
He has assisted at Opera Australia (Eugene Onegin), Cincinnati Opera (Opera Fusion New Works: Fellow Travelers), and Ballet Preljocaj with Orchestra Victoria (Snow White), and was recently featured in a documentary by Italian Television Station RAI on the 2018 Donatella Flick Competition, which aired in Spring 2019. In Fall 2019, he was the Assistant Conductor at the Royal Danish Opera for the World Premiere of composer Hans Abrahamsen’s first opera, Snedronningen (The Snow Queen), and in Spring 2020 he joins Malmö Symfoniorkester as Assistant Conductor for their Stravinsky Festival.
After studying viola at the University of Queensland with Patricia Pollett and serving as a core member of the Australian Youth Orchestra for two seasons with tours across China and Europe, Alexander studied conducting at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Imre Palló. Further studies took place at the Gstaad Conducting Academy with Neeme Järvi, Leonid Grin and Gennady Rozhdestvensky, conducting the Gstaad Festival Orchestra during the Menuhin Festival, and at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Mark Gibson on full scholarship.
Alexander’s performances cover the traditional orchestral and operatic repertoire as well as the works of living composers, having given world and regional premieres of works by major Danish and American composers.
Photo by Jackie Stevens
Updated January 2020