Aziz Shokhakimov is Music Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg and Artistic Director of the Tekfen Philharmonic Orchestra. From 2015 to 2021, he served as Kapellmeister at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. As a guest conductor, he has led orchestras such as the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony (hr-Sinfonieorchester). In North America, he has conducted, among others, the symphony orchestras of Houston, Seattle, and Toronto.
His current symphonic engagements include the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Tonhalle-Orchester Düsseldorf, the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, the Gulbenkian Orchestra, the Utah Symphony, and Sinfonia Varsovia.
Aziz Shokhakimov is also highly sought after in the operatic repertoire, with debuts at the Opéra National de Paris conducting Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and at the Bavarian State Opera with Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades. In his capacity as Music Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, he conducted a new production of Wagner’s Lohengrin at the Opéra du Rhin. During his tenure at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, he led new productions including The Queen of Spades, Madama Butterfly, Salome, and Tosca.
Shokhakimov maintains an ongoing relationship with the Salzburg Festival, where in August 2016 he was selected from more than 100 candidates to win the prestigious Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award. He returned in August 2017 for the prizewinners’ concert with the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien (RSO Wien) and conducted the Festival’s opening ceremony in 2019, with Patricia Kopatchinskaja as soloist.
Born in 1988 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Shokhakimov entered the Uspensky Music School for Gifted Children at the age of six, where he studied violin, viola, and conducting (in the class of Professor Vladimir Neymer). At the age of 13, he made his debut with the National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan, conducting Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1. The following year, he conducted his first opera, Carmen, at the National Opera of Uzbekistan. In 2001, he was appointed Assistant Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan, and in 2006 he became its Chief Conductor. In 2010, at the age of just 21, Shokhakimov won second prize at the International Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in Bamberg under the patronage of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra.