Recent season highlights include engagements with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Seoul Philharmonic, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Vienna Symphony, Bergen Philharmonic,Staatsorchester Hamburg, and the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra. 

Aziz Shokhakimov is equally prolific in the operatic repertoire. In 2024/25 he returned to the Bavarian State Opera to conduct Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor having made his debut a season earlier with Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame. He has conducted Lucia di Lammermoor at Opera National de Paris and as part of his tenure with Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra he has conducted a new production of Wagner’s Lohengrin at Opera du Rhin. As Kapellmeister at Deutsche Oper am Rhein he conducted new productions of The Queen of Spades, Madame Butterfly, Salome and Tosca among others.

Together with the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra, Aziz Shokhakimov has released three recordings on Warner Classics. In May 2025, to coincide with the 150^th anniversary of Ravel’s birth, they released a full recording of his stunning ballet score Daphnis et Chloë, to great critical acclaim. In 2024, they released Prokofiev Symphony No.1 and Suites No.1 and 2 Romeo from Juliet and in 2023, Tchaikovsky Symphony No.5 and Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture. 

In August 2016, having been selected from more than 100 candidates, Shokhakimov won the prestigious Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award. 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. In 2023, he received the French critics’ prize ​“la personnalité musicale of the year”.