Aziz Shokhakimov

Aziz Shokhakimov was born in Tashkent on 3 October 1988 into a family of musicians. From the age of six he studied violin, viola and conducting at the Uspensky Music School for Gifted Children in Tashkent under Vladimir Neymer, and he later graduated from the Uspensky academic music lyceum and the Tashkent conservatory.

He took up the baton very young. At 13 he made his debut with the National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan, conducting Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Liszt’s First Piano Concerto, and a year or so later he conducted Bizet’s “Carmen” at the Navoi Theatre in Tashkent. He became the orchestra’s assistant conductor in 2001 and led it from 2006 to 2012.

In 2010 he won second prize at the Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition in Bamberg, which led to engagements with the Staatskapelle Dresden, the London Philharmonic, the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi. In the 2013–14 season he conducted Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, and in August 2016 he was a joint winner of the Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award at the Salzburg Festival.

From 2015 to 2021 he was Kapellmeister of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, and since 2017 he has been listed as artistic director of Turkey’s Tekfen Philharmonic Orchestra. As a guest he has conducted the symphony orchestras of Toronto and Seattle, the Seoul Philharmonic, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony and the Orchestre National de France, and has worked at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, the Paris Opera, the Komische Oper Berlin and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.

In July 2020 the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra announced him as its music and artistic director from the 2021–22 season. His initial three-season contract was extended to 2026 and then, in 2025, to 31 August 2028. The partnership has produced recordings for Warner Classics, and in 2022 he led the orchestra on a tour of South Korea.

His debut recording, “Trip to Russia” with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, came out on the Orfeo label in 2018. In 2023 he received the Musical Personality of the Year prize from the French Syndicat de la critique for theatre, music and dance, and in October 2024 he made his debut with the Orchestre de Paris.