Alex Klein

Biography

One of the world’s leading oboists, Alex Klein, received a Grammy Award in 2002 for his recording of the Richard Strauss Oboe Concerto with Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony, where Klein served as Principal Oboe and was later presented with a “Principal Oboe Emeritus” status by Riccardo Muti.

Klein began his musical studies in his native Brazil at the age of 9 and subsequently received his music degrees at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music under the tutelage of James Caldwell. Klein won the First Prizes in the International Oboe Competitions of Geneva, New York, Fernand Gillet and Piracicaba, with additional prizes in Tokyo and Prague. Klein left the Chicago Symphony Orchestra due to complications arising from Musician’s Focal Dystonia, a neurological condition affecting a significant number of musicians and which took away control of two fingers of his left hand. After leaving the Chicago Symphony, Klein devoted his life to the advancement of young musicians and to foster music as a social tool in disadvantaged communities. In Brazil he founded and to this day is Artistic Director of FEMUSC – Santa Catarina Music Festival, which has served over eight thousand students from over forty countries and is Latin America’s largest music festival. He also founded the award-winning, “El Sistema”-inspired PRIMA – Program of Social Inclusion though Music and the Arts placing fully-funded youth orchestras inside high-risk communities, helping foster social change and sending scores of teenagers to universities, most for the first time in their family history.

During this convalescence period Klein relearned how to play the oboe around the limitations of focal dystonia, adapting his oboe and following the latest ideas on how musicians might escape this peril. This process created methodologies in high-level achievement and structuring the teaching of the oboe which continues to benefit hundreds of young oboists who learn from him in clinics and masterclasses around the world. In time, Klein started recording again, playing recitals, and in 2016 again successfully auditioned for his former Chicago Symphony position.

Klein taught at the Oberlin Conservatory, Northwestern University, DePaul University, University of Washington, and the Aspen Music Festival, serving as Principal Oboe of the Aspen Chamber Symphony. He has recorded a wide variety of works for solo oboe for Parma Records, Boston Records and Cedille Records, from baroque concertos by Antonio Vivaldi to modern works by Yano and Sydor written specifically for him. Two of his latest CD’s, 20th-Century Oboe Sonatas (2019) featuring works by Poulenc, Saint-Saens, Dutilleux, Bozza, Bowen and Eben, and “…when there are no words” (2021) were nominated for Grammy Awards. His “Amoroso” recording (2024) featuring works for oboe and harp have been streamed and downloaded over 4 million times worldwide, and his latest CD release, Taming the Impossible featuring Paganini Caprices and the first ever comercial recording of Pasculli’s Three Characteristic Studies was just released on Navona Records. Alex Klein’s two Etude Books, using the music of J.S. Bach to guide oboists through the maze of extreme techniques, are being released in 2026.

Alex Klein regularly presents masterclasses in Brazil, Latin America, China, Europe and Russia with his approach incorporating elements from all oboé schools and focusing on music making. As a conductor, he has led major professional orchestras and festivals in Brazil, United States, China, Portugal and Italy, specializing in pre-professional student orchestras and emppowerment of young musicians.

SPECIALTIES:

Audition prep
Dystonia

LANGUAGES:

English, Portuguese, Spanish