Aleksey Igudesman

Aleksey Igudesman is known as a violinist, but has also established himself as a composer, conductor, actor, director and producer. He was born in St. Petersburg, Russia and at the age of 12 he was accepted to the prestigious Yehudi Menuhin School in England. He then studied violin with Boris Kuschnir at the Vienna Conservatory. Aleksey's music, published by Universal Edition and his compositions have been performed worldwide by soloists, ensembles and orchestras, often with him as a solo violinist and conductor. He performs his violin duets in the project Violins of the World, in which his poems are recited by Sir Roger Moore. Aleksey has written and performed as a soloist on several movie soundtracks, for Oscar winning film composer Hans Zimmer, such as The Road to El Dorado and Spanglish and most recently for Sherlock Holmes which was nominated for the Oscar for the best original score. He has co-written the music for the documentary Jealous of the Birds with Hans Zimmer and also been involved with the soundtrack of Rango. He has appeared in several short films and has appeared in, directed and co-produced the feature length documentary The Festival about the Julian Rachlin & Friends festival, featuring John Malkovich, Sir Roger Moore, among many others. Together with the internationally acclaimed pianist Hyung-ki Joo, he appears as Igudesman & Joo. Their show A Little Nightmare Music has received much acclaim by critics and audiences alike and been watched on YouTube over 20 million times, to date. They often perform with Gidon Kremer, Julian Rachlin, Janine Jansen, Viktoria Mullova, Emanuel Ax, John Malkovich among many others. In 2009 Igudesman & Joo toured Germany, Holland and Belgium as part of the Night of the Proms, appearing in front of half a million people. They also have a show with symphony and chamber orchestras, called BIG Nightmare Music. Aleksey Igudesman plays a Santo Serafin 1717 violin, kindly loaned to him by Erste Bank.