Martin Majkut
Majkut has been serving as Music Director of the Rogue Valley Symphony in Ashland, Oregon since 2010. The orchestra serves three cities, each with a distinct demographic profile. The RVS has received national recognition for his ambitious programming.
Since 2017, Majkut has been the Music Director of the Queens Symphony Orchestra in New York. The orchestra has expanded its season during his tenure and quickly gained a following throughout the borough. Performing in a variety of ethnically diverse communities, the QSO plays in small halls for several hundred people as well as for an audience of 16,000 at its 4th of July concerts.
Born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), Majkut earned his Ph.D. in conducting at the Academy of Performing Arts. Majkut came to the U.S. as a Fulbright scholar in 2003 and earned his second doctorate in 2008 from the University of Arizona. He also studied at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy and at the Wiener Meisterkurse in Vienna, Austria.
During the pandemic, Majkut imagined a series of films, shorts, and documentaries replacing live productions of the RVS and the QSO. He also created a succession of “quarantine videos.” Under the title “What Goes Through The Conductor’s Head,” they offer an insight into a conductor’s score study process. They can be found on YouTube and on his website: www.martinmajkut.com.
Majkut currently teaches at Aaron Copland School of Music in New York City.
Photo Credit: Kurt DeWitt, at the Ashland Independent Film Festival, June 2021