Saleem Abboud Ashkar made his New York Carnegie Hall debut at the age of twenty-two and has since worked with many of the world’s leading orchestras, among them the Vienna Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, La Scala Philharmonic, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, the Deutsche Symphony Orchestra Berlin and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
He regularly performs with conductors such as Zubin Mehta, Daniel Barenboim, Riccardo Muti, Lawrence Foster, Bertrand de Billy, Philip Jordan and Ludovic Morlot, and following a highly successful debut with Christoph Eschenbach and the NDR Hamburg Orchestra, where he was immediately invited to return, Eschenbach invited Ashkar to play the Schumann Concerto with the Dusseldorf Symphony Orchestra in the Schumann Birthday Concert in June 2010.
He has toured extensively with Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra performing Mendelssohn’s First Piano Concerto, including appearances at the Proms and the Lucerne Festival on a tour celebrating the bicentennial anniversary of the composer's birth. Other appearances in future seasons include invitations to work with the London Symphony Orchestra in London and Bucharest, NDR Hamburg under Eschenbach, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin under Kazushi Ono, the Maggio Musicale, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic under Nikolaj Znaider, the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Royal Danish Theatre.
A dedicated recitalist and chamber musician, Ashkar regularly appears at venues such as the Concertgebouw, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Conservatorio di musica “Giuseppe Verdi” di Milano and at festivals including the Salzburger Festspiele with the Vienna Philharmonic, the Proms with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Tivoli with the Israel Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta, Lucerne, Ravinia, Risor, Menton and the Ruhr Klavier Festival, collaborating with artistes including Daniel Barenboim, Nikolaj Znaider and Waltraud Meier.
Born in 1976 in Nazareth, Ashkar studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London and at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hannover, Germany.
Mariinsky Theatre:
Concert Hall:
