Alexander Kahn

Alexander Kahn is Professor of Music and Director of Orchestral Activities at Sonoma State University. At Sonoma State he directs the Sonoma State Symphony Orchestra and teaches courses in conducting, music history, musicianship, and general education.

Kahn comes to Sonoma State from Gettysburg College, where he was Associate Professor of Music and Director of Orchestral Activities at the Sunderman Conservatory of Music. He is also the Founder and former Music Director of the UC Berkeley Chamber Orchestra and the former Assistant Conductor UC Berkeley Symphony.

Kahn has worked with a variety of orchestras across the United States and throughout Europe. Currently he serves as Assistant and Cover Conductor for the Santa Rosa Symphony, as well as Music Director of the Vintner’s Chamber Orchestra, a professional chamber orchestra that performs at wineries throughout Sonoma and Napa counties. Previous positions he has held include Music Director of the Metta Ensemble (Gettysburg, PA), Cover Conductor for the Baltimore Symphony, Staff Conductor for the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC, Assistant Conductor of the Bamberg Symphony, and Music Director of the Bamberg Collegium Musicum. Recent guest conducting engagements have included work with the Winchester Orchestra of San Jose, the Mill Valley Philharmonic, Festival Opera of Walnut Creek, Encore Coda and Cazadero Performing Arts Camps, and middle school and high school honor orchestras throughout California. As a champion for orchestral music education in the public schools, he serves on the Advisory Board for the California Orchestra Director’s Association (CODA).

He earned a PhD in Music History from UC Berkeley and remains active as a scholar. His dissertation entitled “Double Lives: Exile Composers in Los Angeles” focused on the community of European exiles who fled to Los Angeles during the Third Reich. He has lectured and published on this topic and other issues related to World-War II-era music history, as well on a on a variety of topics including music and mindfulness meditation, the history of film music, and the history of amateur music-making in America. His book on the intersection of mindfulness and the Alexander Technique, Caring for the Whole Musician, co-authored with Larry Hensel, was published by Routledge Press in May 2023.

Kahn’s love of music was inherited from his father, Eugene Kahn, a conductor and educator on Long Island. His primary conducting studies were at UC Berkeley with David Milnes and at the Peabody Institute with Marin Alsop, Gustav Meier and Markand Thakar. He has also participated in conducting workshops around the world with teachers including Larry Rachleff, Kenneth Kiesler, Daniel Lewis and Peter Gülke.

When not conducting, Kahn enjoys cooking, hiking, reading, and travelling, and spending time with his wonderful wife and daughter.