Eldar Azimov

Eldar Sarvarovich Azimov was born in Tashkent on 6 February 1945 into the family of the writer and literary scholar Sarvar Azimov, a younger brother of the poet Hamid Olimjon. He is a conductor, violinist and teacher, and the founder of the chamber orchestras of Uzbek Radio and Television and of “Turkiston”.

He started as a violinist at the Uspensky music school under Naum Pover and then studied at the Tashkent Conservatory in the violin class of Mikhail Reyson. He spent three years in the army in a military wind band, whose leader often left him in charge of rehearsals; that is where he learned the basics of conducting. On his return he resumed his studies at the conservatory, and a meeting with the composer and conductor Mukhtar Ashrafi led him to the conducting faculty, from which he graduated in 1971.

As a young man he played the violin in a string quartet at Uzteleradio (1963–1968) and from 1971 worked in the orchestra of Uzbek State Radio and Television. With the orchestra’s string section he began to rehearse chamber repertoire on his own, and in 1972 the group played chamber works by Uzbekistani composers at a travelling plenum of the USSR Union of Composers. In 1974 the chamber orchestra received official status at the State Radio and Television Committee of Uzbekistan, with Azimov as its organiser, artistic director and chief conductor. Until 1991 the group recorded two or three records a year with the Melodiya studio’s branch; under his baton about two hundred works entered the radio’s “golden fund” and more than thirty LPs were released.

He has taught at the Tashkent Conservatory since 1976, as docent and later professor, and leads the conservatory’s student chamber orchestra. In 1989 he was given the title Honoured Art Worker of the Uzbek SSR.

In 1991 he moved to the chamber orchestra “Stars of Uzbekistan”. In August 1994 he proposed to Farrukh Zakirov, director of the “Turkiston” creative association, that a new chamber orchestra be formed at its palace; the ensemble’s official history began with its presentation concert on 8 February 1995. Its repertoire includes Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Saint-Saëns and Tchaikovsky as well as Central Asian composers such as Ashrafi, Yanov-Yanovsky, Latif-Zade, Tadjiev and Bafoev. In May 2024 the orchestra played in Tatarstan for the first time, in Almetyevsk and Nizhnekamsk; in 2025 Azimov’s 80th birthday and the orchestra’s 30th anniversary were marked.