Alexandre Da Costa

“I was delighted: what a violinist, beauty of sound, fastest fingers I have heard yet, the good taste to play different styles and great humour. Chapeau!”
Leon Spierer
Berlin Philharmonic Concertmaster 1963-1993

“A great artist that I appreciate and strongly support, violinist Alexandre Da Costa. “
Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos
Musical America Artist of the Year 2010

Sony Classical artist, Juno Award winner and Longueuil Symphony’s Music Director and Chief Conductor, Alexandre Da Costa was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. In 1998, at age 18, Alexandre Da Costa obtained a Master’s Degree in violin and went on to study with Zakhar Bron in Europe. In 2010, he received the prestigious Virginia-Parker Prize, one of Canada’s highest cultural distinctions.

Winner of many national and international first prizes, Alexandre Da Costa has been guest soloist and conductor for nearly two thousand concerts and recitals throughout the Americas, Europe, Oceania and Asia. He has performed in major halls such as Vienna’s Musikverein, Berlin’s Philharmonie, New York's Carnegie Hall, and played with prestigious orchestras such as the London Royal Philharmonic, the Montreal Symphony, the Berlin Symphony, the Vienna Symphony, the Prague Philharmonic and the Toronto Symphony. He has worked with conductors such as Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Lorin Maazel, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Leonard Slatkin, Matthias Bamert and Vasily Petrenko. Among Da Costa's chamber music colleagues have been Menahem Pressler and Elizabeth Leonskaya.

As a recording artist, he has more than 25 solo Cds, among them, his JUNO award winner recording of the concertos by American composer Michael Daugherty, with the Montreal Symphony under Pedro Halffter for Warner Classics. He now records for SONY Classical.

Alexandre Da Costa recently conducted the Vienna Symphony, the Queen Sofia Chamber Orchestra in Madrid, the Fremantle Chamber Orchestra and the Virtuosos of Venezuela Symphony Orchestra. In 2019, Alexandre Da Costa is named Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Longueuil Symphony Orchestra.

He was Head of Strings and Associate Professor at the Edith Cowan University (Australia) from 2014 to 2018, and is currently Artistic Director of the Laurentians International Festival of Canada since 2012.

Alexandre Da Costa plays the “Deveault” Stradivarius of 1701 loaned by his friends Maryse and Guy Deveault.