Sergey Akimov

Sergey Akimov is a Russian-born, Berlin-based conductor with a distinctive artistic range. A winner of the 16th Dimitris Mitropoulos International Competition in Thessaloniki in 2024, he combines a serious classical foundation with an unusually vivid stage presence.

Born in Moscow, he began conducting lessons at the age of thirteen and went on to graduate with outstanding results from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. In 2016 he won the position of First Kapellmeister at the Moscow Operetta Theatre, where his productions included Die Fledermaus, Die lustige Witwe and Ball im Savoy.

In 2018 he appeared at the Salzburg Festival as part of the Nestle Young Conductors Award, conducting Camerata Salzburg. He later took part in the 2021 Malko Competition in Copenhagen and in 2024 won the Dimitris Mitropoulos Competition, one of the major international competitions for conductors.

Akimov’s repertoire spans Haydn, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Strauss, Stravinsky and contemporary music. In 2019 he was appointed conductor of Studio New Music, a leading ensemble specialising in avant-garde and contemporary repertoire. He has given the Russian first performances of Gershwin’s one-act opera Blue Monday and a chamber arrangement of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps.

He is also active as an arranger, creating chamber-orchestra versions of works including Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite No. 2. His mentors include Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Fabio Luisi, Johannes Schlaefli, Howard Griffiths, Vladimir Jurowski and Simone Young.

Alongside his classical work, Akimov is music director and chief conductor of RockestraLive, a rock orchestra for which he also creates arrangements. These performances bring film, rock and symphonic forces together with exceptional physical energy and theatrical flair.

He is also an accomplished 2D animation artist whose cartoons about the orchestral world have been commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Turkish Airlines, at akimych.com.