Aleksey Igudesman
Aleksey Igudesman is best known as a violinist, but he has also established himself as a composer, conductor, actor and filmmaker. Aleksey was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and was accepted into the prestigious Yehudi Menuhin School in England at the age of 12. He then later studied violin with Boris Kuschnir at the Vienna Conservatory.
His compositions are published by Universal Edition and have been performed worldwide by soloists, ensembles and orchestras, such as the New York Philharmonic and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, often with his participation as a solo violinist and conductor. Aleksey has performed his numerous violin duets in the project “Violins of the World”, where his poems are recited by Sir Roger Moore.
Aleksey has written for and performed as a soloist on several movie soundtracks and has worked closely with Academy Award-winning film composer Hans Zimmer on numerous movies, such as Sherlock Holmes which received an Oscar nomination for the Best Original Score. Aleksey has co-written with Hans Zimmer the soundtrack for Jealous of the Birds together, which won the Grand Prize for the Best Original Score in the Rhode Island International Film Festival. In 2016, Aleksey appeared alongside Hans Zimmer as a soloist on tour.
Aleksey has directed, produced and starred in the feature-length comedy/documentary Noseland, featuring, among others, Julian Rachlin, John Malkovich and Sir Roger Moore. Noseland has been premiered in 14 festivals around the world and won the “Most Entertaining Documentary” award at the Doc Miami International Film Festival. Aleksey stars in an Austrian TV series, broadcasted by ORF, entitled “Du Kunst Mich”, where he features talents from the fields of music, dance, photography and fashion.
He is currently working on a new TV series entitled “Feast Of Duos” based on Igudesman & Joo’s violin and piano competition set in Sion, Switzerland. Aleksey partners with pianist Hyung-ki Joo, together they perform as IGUDESMAN & JOO. Their shows “A Little Nightmare Music”, “And Now Mozart”, “Play It Again” and “Silent Night Music” and “BIG Nightmare Music”, “Upbeat” and “Scary Concert”, cooperatively with symphony and chamber orchestras, have received much acclaim around the world. Clips with excerpts of those shows have been watched on YouTube over 40 million times. As a duo, they have performed with Gidon Kremer, Julian Rachlin, Janine Jansen, Viktoria Mullova, Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell and John Malkovich, among others.
Igudesman & Joo have performed in front of half a million people, alongside rock legends like Simple Minds, Kim Wilde, Sinead O’Connor, Tears for Fears and Robin Gibb from the Bee Gees.
Apart from touring extensively across the world with Igudesman & Joo, he performs in his show “The Cyber Conductor” with Sebastian Gürtler and in his solo show “Fasten Seat Belts”, as well as “MAD – Music & Dance” together with the “chameleon dancer” Manaho Shimokawa and violinist Kristina Suklar. Aleksey regularly performs in numerous shows with various orchestras, such as the “Vienna and I”, “Waltz of The World”, “The other seasons” or “The music critic” – where he created a sardonic mix of the most evil music critiques of the last centuries written about some of the greatest works of music. Equipped with a frivolous potpourri of musical insults, John Malkovich slips into the role of the evil critic who believes the music of Beethoven, Chopin, Prokofiev and the likes to be weary and dreary.
Aleksey Igudesman’s future plans include various endeavours, including the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, numerous publications on Universal Edition and Modern Works. 2018 will also see Igudesman & Joo’s book How To Save The World come to light. Aleksey plays a Santo Serafin 1717 violin, kindly loaned to him by the ERSTE BANK and a bow constructed by modern bow-maker Benoit Rolland. His strings of choice are by Thomastik-Infeld.