Youth Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan

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The 37-year old Uzbek conductor Kamoliddin Urinbayev received his musical training at the State Conservatory of Uzbekistan in Tashkent and went on to study conducting at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow. At the same time, he was invited to participate in numerous festivals and competitions, such as the Great Silk Road (South Korea), New Names (Russia) and the Forum Conducting (Germany). Urinbayev conducts both concerts and operas. Thus, he has conducted the State Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine and the State Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan as well as the Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra. At the Academic State Theatre in Tashkent, he has conducted Beethoven’s Fidelio. In 2014 Urinbayev founded the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan. That same year, the Uzbek President awarded him the title “Distinguished Artist of Uzbekistan”. In 2020 the conductor was also appointed rector of the State Conservatory in Tashkent.

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Originally from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the pianist Eleonora Kotlibulatova received her first piano lessons from her mother when she was five years old. In 1996, the ten-year-old made her solo debut. She won numerous prizes at international piano competitions, e.g. at the Grand Prix “Art of the 21^st Century” in Kiev (Ukraine) in 2001, at the International Chopin Competition in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and at the 7^th International Rubinstein Competition in Paris in 2004. In 2010 Eleonora Kotlibulatova began studying with Matthias Kirschnereit at the Rostock Music Academy, from which she graduated with distinction in 2014. The artist has undertaken concert tours from America to Asia; she currently lives in Berlin as a pianist and teacher. Apart from her solo appearances, she works regularly with the guitarist Evgeny Beleninov in order to make this unusual duo formation more well-known through original works and transcriptions.

Originally from Kuwait, the composer Amer Jaafar began his training in the USA at the Portland State University and at Oregon University and then completed his composition studies at the Chopin Academy in Warsaw. At the moment, the 61-year-old composer is a professor in Kuwait. In 2008 Jaafar won the first prize at a composition competition in Sanaa (Yemen) for his work Secrets. He has come to particular renown for his work Impatience of a Captive (2000), which was originally written as a piano sextet and then arranged for orchestra. In addition, Jaafar has composed piano works such as Dance of Peace and the Devil and Dance of the Gazelle. In 2020 the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan performed his work Silk Road. In his works, Jaafar aims to interweave western and Arabic music: “The main reason I’ve always sought to study international music was that I wanted to merge international music with Kuwaiti folk music and Arabic music in order to develop it, present it to the whole world and eventually reach internationalism.”