Alexander Frey

In 2012, Frey performed 4 sold-out organ recitals in one weekend at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The concerts consisted of music of France as part of the celebration of the re-opening of the museum's newly renovated French galleries.

In January 2008, during an interview broadcast on Radio Cairo while conducting in Egypt, Frey stated that "Music is a peaceful island in a river of sadness."

Frey was Musical Advisor to the Hollywood in Vienna Festival from 2007–2013.

Frey's many guest conducting appearances include performances on five continents with the Rio de Janeiro Philharmonic, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Athens State Symphony Orchestra (Greece), Orchestra dell'Arena di Verona, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Rome Philharmonic Orchestra, Seoul Royal Symphony Orchestra, Cairo Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica del Estado de México (State of Mexico Symphony Orchestra), Orchestra Filarmonica della Calabria, Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana, Varna Philharmonic Orchestra, Collegium Symphonium Veneto (Padua), and the Sibelius Symphony Orchestra among others. He also conducted Ensemble Europa (members of the Israel Philharmonic and Deutsche Oper orchestras) in sold-out concerts in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Berlin commemorating the 50th anniversary of World War II and the liberation of the concentration camps. In 2006, he conducted Prague's official orchestral gala concert (with the Stern Chamber Orchestra) celebrating Mozart's 250th birthday on the anniversary day of the composer's birth. In 2010, he was the only American conductor invited to conduct an Italian orchestra for the Festa della Repubblica, the Italian independence day on which all the major orchestras in Italy give concerts in honor of the occasion.

Alexander Frey's recordings and DVD have received the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (formerly known as the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis, one of Germany's highest recording honors), ECHO Klassik Prize, Choice of the French Media Critics, Best Recording of the Year (Fi Magazine), Best Original Cast Recording of the Year-2005 (Borders Music), Favorite Record of the Year-2005 (ArkivMusic), the Bronze World Medal of the New York Festival, BBC Critics Choice, Record of the Month (MusicWeb, UK), Best Instrumental CD of the Month (Galaxie Magazine, Canada) and Best CD of the Month (Best New Classics). His recording of Korngold's Between Two Worlds for piano and orchestra (on the Decca label) was listed by Gramophone Magazine as one of the 250 Greatest Recordings of All Time. June 2005 marked the release of a new CD of Frey conducting the world premiere recording of Leonard Bernstein's Peter Pan, which Frey restored from the composer's manuscripts, including almost an hour of music previously unheard. This historic recording features Broadway star Linda Eder in the role of Wendy, and Daniel Narducci singing the role of Captain Hook. The CD reached #8 on the Billboard Classical Music Chart®, becoming the third highest selling musical theater recording during the weeks following its release, making Frey a Billboard® Top 10 Artist as both conductor and pianist. It also became the best selling recording of Koch International Classics (now called Entertainment One), the record company which produced it. Frey's CD of the complete solo piano music of Leonard Bernstein (also on Koch International Classics) is considered to be the definitive performance of that music His ongoing project is recording the complete piano works of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (Koch International Classics) and he is regarded as the leading interpreter of Korngold's keyboard music. Alexander Frey's recordings are on the Koch International Classics (Entertainment One), Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, RCA Red Seal and Bach Guild labels.

He frequently played recitals with the renowned Grammy Award-winning tenor, Jerry Hadley. Frey has performed chamber music with violinist Ruggiero Ricci and the Vermeer Quartet, among others. Ricci and Frey performed New York City's official concert commemorating the tricentennial anniversary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach, given in a sold-out Alice Tully Hall on the actual day of the composer's 300th birthday. He has performed duo concerts in Europe with American writer and A Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor. In 2001, Frey gave live performances for the BBC (with the legendary soprano Marta Eggerth) when the two artists gave recitals together in American and Europe which included sold-out performances in London's Wigmore Hall and in New York at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. He also performed an all-Verdi program for RAI in Italy.

An hour-long radio program about Frey's life and work, hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel, was broadcast on The Studs Terkel Program, in 1997 throughout the United States.

Alexander Frey was Principal Conductor of the Rome Philharmonic Orchestra from 1996 to 2004, and during that time was the only American music director of an Italian symphony orchestra. He was appointed conductor of the Bohemia Symphony Orchestra (later named the Stern Chamber Orchestra) in Prague, Czech Republic from 2000–2006.

Frey has been described as "a witty, urbane figure whose wide-ranging genius and charisma shine in his performances onstage and in conversation offstage". Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Studs Terkel referred to him as "a Renaissance Man". In a later interview in The Guardian celebrating his 95th birthday, Terkel discussed his own "diverse and idiosyncratic taste in music, from Bob Dylan to Alexander Frey, Louis Armstrong to Woodie Guthrie". Frey has also been called "a raconteur, a young Oscar Levant" by American writer and Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor, "his generation's Noël Coward", and that "he seems like a classic character from the golden age of the Broadway musical".

From 1992 to 1996, he was Music Director of Germany's most renowned theater, the Berliner Ensemble, founded by Bertolt Brecht, where he collaborated with the celebrated stage director Peter Zadek. Frey was the first American to hold a position at the Berliner Ensemble, as well as being the theater's first non-German Music Director; his historic predecessors who held the same music directorship included the composers Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, and Paul Dessau. While there, Zadek and Frey's artistic collaboration made theater history by producing several revolutionary and innovative productions. They adapted Vittorio De Sica's film Miracle in Milan (Miracolo e Milano) for the stage using the actual entire dialogue script from the film. Frey devised the idea of restoring the entire original film score and performing it live throughout the play using exactly the same music cues as in the film, marking the first time this technique was ever used. He repeated this method for a subsequent production in Austria of a stage version of the film Arsenic and Old Lace. For Miracle in Milan, Frey and the production were nominated for a Berlin Theater Critics' Prize. In addition to directing the music for 7 other large productions at BE, Frey also produced and directed the Berliner Ensemble's A Paul Dessau Evening, a multimedia retrospective of the musical and dramatic works of the theater's music director of the 1950s.

Since the 1990s, Frey has maintained a strong commitment to both contemporary music and the film music of Hollywood which has been evident in the many world and regional premieres he is given. At the 2009 "Hollywood in Vienna Festival" held in Vienna, Austria, Frey gave the first public live performance of John Williams' music to Jean-Jacques Annaud's film Seven Years in Tibet when he played a piano transcription of the complete score to that movie. He also performed the world premieres of Max Steiner's Wiener Lob and a large-scale piano transcription of David Arnold's music for the film Independence Day in concert with Arnold in attendance. In Mexico, Frey conducted the Latin American premiere performances of both Bernard Herrmann's music for Alfred Hitchcock's film Vertigo and Franz Waxman's music for the 1941 film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He also gave the first public performance of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's music for the 1944 film Between Two Worlds, as well as the European premiere of the Suite from Schindler's List, composed and arranged by John Williams. In Barrie Gavin's documentary film, Erich Wolfgang Korngold-Adventures of Wunderkind: A Portrait and Concert, Frey performs the first public hearing of Korngold's second symphony, composed in Hollywood at the end of the composers life and exists only in piano score, in addition to playing several solo keyboard works and most of the background piano music.

Frey studied piano for many years in Chicago as a protégé of the pianist, harpsichordist and teacher Gavin Williamson (1898–1989), one of the last direct links to 19th-century pianism, and who was a pupil of Arthur Schnabel, Wanda Landowska, and Ethel Leginska. His organ teachers in the Chicago area were Richard Webster and Edward Mondello. He received the Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees (both with honors) from the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance where he studied organ with Robert Glasgow, conducting with Gustav Meier and composition with William Albright and William Bolcom.