NORWAY – Rein Alexander grew up in a musical family, mainly with his mother and brother, in Oslo. His mother and father play several instruments, and his brother is also a skilled singer. His father worked as a teacher at Elverum Folk High School, a political journalist in Oslo, and later as a cultural director in Stryn municipality.
Rein Alexander started singing at an early age, and for a number of years, he was part of NRK’s boys’ choir, Sølvguttene. As an eleven-year-old, he got a role in the Norwegian Opera’s production of The Magic Flute.
He has won several international competitions and scholarships, and he has sung in several stage productions in Norway, Iceland and London. In 2003, he won Kjempesjansen on NRK. In the spring of 2009, Rein Alexander moved back to Oslo after living for several years in Sunnmøre, where he is descended from, and a farm in Hagfors in Värmland in Sweden.
Rein Alexander has studied music at upper secondary schools in Oslo and in New York, Toneheim Folkehøgskole, at the Barratt Due Music Institute in Oslo and the Music Conservatory in Reykjavík, Iceland.
At the age of twenty, he was first diagnosed with dyslexia. From 1996 to 2000 he attended the Royal Academy of Music in London. He then took a job as a fisherman in the Barents Sea, moved to Italy, and then returned home and worked as a security assistant in a hotel chain for several years.
After that, he had plans to travel to Germany as an opera singer, but after he got the lead role in Les Misérables (The Miserable) set up by Bømlo Musikallaug, the plans were changed and he decided to become an artist.
He has participated in several programs on TV, not least when he broke through as the winner of the talent show Kjempesjansen on NRK in 2003. In 2020, he was among the favourites to win the Melodi Grand Prix with the song “One Last Time”, but did not reach the gold final. He will participate in the Melodi Grand Prix 2021 with the song «Eyes Wide Open».
In 2003 and 2004, Rein Alexander starred as Jean Valjean in Les Misérables at Moster Amfi, and in 2006 he was Anatoly in the musical Chess at Moster. From 2006 he performed the one-man musical Terje Vigen with music by Kjell Ole Haune, around Norway. He has also appeared as Anton Fugger in the musical Which Witch.
He sang the role of Kristoffer Rustung in Henning Sommerro’s opera Olav Engelbrektsson in the summer of 2014 at Stenvikholmen Castle in Trondheim. Furthermore, he has played the role of Gaston in Beauty and the Beast in Oslo and Stavanger, The Priest- in the Hans Nilsen Hauge musical- It burns a fire. Shere Kahn in Jungelboka at Chateau Neuf in Oslo 2017 and the narrator in Toråsspelet at Torås fort on Tjøme in the summer of 2019.
