BIOGRAPHY

Majkut has been serving as Music Director of the Rogue Valley Symphony in Ashland, Oregon since 2010. During his tenure, RVS received national recognition for its ambitious programming, with regular commissioning of American composers an integral part of its mission. The orchestra’s budget tripled under Majkut’s leadership. Every concert series gets to be performed in three cities, each with a distinct demographic profile. 

 

Majkut is also the Music Director of the Queens Symphony Orchestra in New York, a position he has held since 2017. Performing in a variety of ethnically diverse communities, QSO’s programming reflects the distinct nature of Queens’s neighborhoods. QSO has quickly gained popularity with Majkut at its helm. Serving the borough of 2.35 million people, the orchestra plays in small halls for several hundred people but also for an audience of 16,000 at its 4th of July concerts. QSO is the only professional symphony orchestra in New York that does not reside in Manhattan. 

  

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.

 

Born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), Majkut earned his Ph.D. in conducting at the Academy of Performing Arts while serving as Assistant Conductor of the Slovak Philharmonic. Majkut came to the U.S. as a Fulbright scholar in 2003 and earned a D.M.A. 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.

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