Aziz Shokhakimov

Aziz Shokhakimov is Music and Artistic Director of the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra since September 2021. His international guest-conducting career includes appearances with the Orchestre de Paris, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Gulbenkian Orchestra. In North America, he has conducted the Dallas, Atlanta, Seattle, Toronto, Houston and Utah symphony orchestras. Opera is an important part of Shokhakimov’s artistic activity: After making his Bavarian State Opera debut with Tchaikovsky’s »The Queen of Spades« in the 2023/24 season, he returned in 2024/25 for Donizetti’s »Lucia di Lammermoor«. At Deutsche Oper am Rhein, his work included new productions of »The Queen of Spades«, »Madama Butterfly«, »Salome« and »Tosca«. Shokhakimov and the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra have released three acclaimed recordings on Warner Classics.
In 2016, Shokhakimov won the Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award. In 2019, he conducted the festival’s opening ceremony with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and was named »Musical Personality of the Year« in 2023. Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 1988, Shokhakimov entered the Uspensky Music School for Gifted Children at age of six. At thirteen, he made his debut with the National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan and was appointed Assistant Conductor. Five Years later, he became the orchestra’s conductor. In 2010, aged twenty-one, he won second prize at the Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition in Bamberg, hosted by the Bamberg Symphony.