Sunday
26 September 2021

As a guest conductor he has appeared with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (London), the Orchestre Symphonique de Mulhouse, the North Czech Philharmonic, the MDR Symphony Orchestra (Leipzig), the Staatskapelle Halle, the Göttingen and Nuremberg Symphony Orchestras, the Philharmonie Südwestfalen, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra and the Kritisches Orchester® Berlin, whose members play in the Berlin Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Berlin and the Staatskapelle Dresden. In 2012 he conducted his first opera production as a guest with the Gürzenich Orchestra at Cologne Opera, where he was invited back repeatedly between 2013 and 2015. In June 2011 Fabio Luisi invited him to the Pacific Music Festival in Japan.

Fuad Ibrahimov was born in Shusha, Azerbaijan, in 1982. At just 15 he took up his first position as a violist in the Azerbaijan State Symphony Orchestra while beginning his viola studies at the music academy there. After graduating, he continued his studies from 2002 at the Cologne University of Music with Prof. Rainer Moog. Following his soloist diploma, he studied conducting with Prof. Michael Luig from 2006 and graduated with top marks in 2011.

During this time he held scholarships from the Friends of Azerbaijani Culture Foundation and the Werner Richard – Dr. Carl Dörken Foundation, and gave concerts in many German cities under the patronage of the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation. In 2010 he received the DAAD Prize for outstanding international students. Since childhood he has performed in Germany and abroad as a soloist and as a member of chamber ensembles and orchestras.

Strongly influenced by masterclasses with Mstislav Rostropovich, among others, he focused early in his conducting career on working with highly gifted young musicians. In 2008 he brought the Azerbaijan Youth Philharmonic, a state orchestra founded on his initiative, to the Young Euro Classic festival in Berlin for the first time. In 2010 he led a joint project of German music schools with Venezuela’s El Sistema and worked in Venezuela with, among others, the Sinfónica of the state of Guárico.

He has held the Presidential Scholarship of the Republic of Azerbaijan since 2013, and in March 2017 the President of Azerbaijan awarded him an Order of Merit for his cultural work. In 2018 he won the Evgeny Svetlanov International Conducting Competition in Paris.