After years of focusing on the violin and piano, Alexandre Da Costa has added conducting to his list of talents. He is the music director and chief conductor of the Longueuil Symphony Orchestra. Da Costa was born in Montreal in 1979. He started lessons on both violin and piano as a child, quickly showing himself to be a prodigy as he gave public concerts on both instruments at the age of nine. Conductor Charles Dutoit encouraged him to continue his studies. Da Costa attended both the University of Montreal, earning a bachelor's degree as a pianist, and the Quebec Conservatory, where he received a master's degree in violin and won the school's first prize. Da Costa soon began a performing career on both violin and piano, touring in Europe and releasing his debut album in 1998 on the Amberola label, playing both instruments. Continuing his studies, he was forced to choose one instrument or the other; he enrolled at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain, and studied with Zakhar Bron. At the 1999 Sarasate International Competition, Da Costa issued the album Hendrix, McCartney & Ysaÿe on the Disques XXI label in 2002, beginning an association with that label; he again performed on both violin and piano on that album, but gradually the violin became more prominent in his work. In the 2000s, decade Da Costa rounded out his education with further study at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna. During this period, he also took conducting classes in Austria and Germany with Christian Schulz and Josep Caballé-Domenech, and also studied musicology. For some years, Da Costa divided his time between Canada and Europe. He continued to record for Disques XXI, garnering a Juno Award nomination in Canada for an album of concertos by composers Luis Freitas Branco and Joly Braga Santos. In 2009, he founded the Ensemble Camerata Orford in Quebec. Da Costa has concertized widely as a violinist, appearing at such major venues as Carnegie Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Musikverein in Vienna, and the Poly Theater in Beijing. Da Costa has been active as an educator, teaching at the Gatineau Conservatory in Quebec, Edith Cowan University in Australia, and the DeTao Group academy in Shanghai. He has appeared as a guest violinist and increasingly often as guest conductor with orchestras across Europe and North America, and in 2018, he was named music director of the Longueuil Symphony Orchestra near Montreal. He is also an enthusiastic chamber player who has recorded the complete Brahms sonatas with pianist Wonny Song. Da Costa has recorded some 25 albums; his 2012 recording of works by Michael Daugherty with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal under conductor Pedro Halffter won Canada's Juno Award. That album appeared on the Warner Classics label, where Da Costa issued several more albums. He moved to Sony Classical for the 2017 album Tchaikovsky, following that up with Stradivarius Je me souviens in 2022. ~ James Manheim, Rovi