Aziz Shokhakimov

Aziz Shokhakimov is equally prolific in the operatic repertoire. The 2022/23 season saw his debut with Opera National de Paris conducting Donizetti’s Lucia de Lammermoor. In 2023/24 Shokhakimov debuts at Bayerischer Staatsoper conducting Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame. As part of his tenure with Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, he will conduct a new production of Wagner’s Lohengrin at Opera du Rhin. As Kapellmeister at Deutsche Oper am Rhein he conducted a new production of The Queen of Spades, Madame Butterfly, Salome and Tosca among others.

Shokhakimov has an ongoing relationship with Salzburg Festival where, having been selected from more than 100 candidates, he won the prestigious Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award in August 2016. He returned to the Salzburg Festival in August 2017 for the prize-winner’s concert with RSO Wien and conducted the Opening Ceremony of Salzburg Festival with Patricia Kopatchinskaja in 2019.

Born in 1988 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Shokhakimov entered the Uspensky Music School for Gifted Children at the age of six, studying violin, viola and orchestral conducting (in the class of Professor Vladimir Neymer). At 13 he made his debut with National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan, conducting Beethoven’s Symphony No.5 and Liszt’s Piano Concerto No.1. During the following year he conducted his first opera, Carmen, at the National Opera of Uzbekistan. He was appointed Assistant Conductor of National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan in 2001 and became its Principal Conductor in 2006. In 2010, at the age of just 21, Shokhakimov won second place at the Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition in Bamberg, under the auspices of the Bamberger Symphoniker.