Pavel Sorokin

Pavel Sorokin was born in Moscow. He graduated from the Central Music School attached to the Moscow Conservatoire (piano section) in 1980 and in the same year entered the Conservatoire (the piano section, Professor L.N. Naumov's class). At the same time, he started to study conducting in Professor Y.I. Simonov's class. In 1983 he joined the Bolshoi Theatre in the capacity of ballet orchestra leader.

From 1987 to 1989 he studied conducting at the Paris Conservatoire in Professor Jean-Sebastian Berrault's class. In the summer of 1989, he took part in the Boston Symphony Orchestra Tanglewood Festival.

He studied under Serge Osawa and Leonard Bernstein. At the end of his studies in Paris, having been given an excellent certificate, he auditioned for the Bolshoi Theatre and was accepted into the company.

He is conductor of the following ballets: Prokofiev's Prodigal Son and Stravinsky's Petrouchka (1991), Le Corsaire (1992, 1994), La Sylphide (1994), Balda to music by Shostakovich (1999), Swan Lake (2001), A Legend of Love (2002), The Bright Stream (2003), Raymonda (2003), Bolt (2005), Carmen-suitу (2005); and of the opera Iolantа (1997). He was assistant to Mstislav Rostropovich on the 1996 production of Khovanshchina.

The conductor’s repertoire includes the following, among other, operas: The Tsar’s Bride, The Queen of Spades, Prince Igor, Un Ballo in maschera, Macbeth, War and Peace, ballet Spartacus. From 2000-2002, Pavel Sorokin was chief conductor of the Radio and Television State Symphony Orchestra. Since 2003, he has been chief conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of Russia. His discography includes recordings of the works of Tchaikovsky, Rakhmaninov and Grieg, with the Academic Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow State Philarmonia, and the Radio and Television State Symphony Orchestra.