Igor Mikhailovich Zhukov was a Soviet and Russian pianist and conductor, born on 31 August 1936 in Gorky and died on 26 January 2018 in Moscow. He was awarded the title of Honored Artist of Russia.
As a pianist, he studied at the music school affiliated with the Moscow Conservatory under Leonid Roizman, and then at the Moscow Conservatory with Emil Gilels and Heinrich Neuhaus. In 1957 he won second prize among pianists at the Long-Thibaud International Competition.
Zhukov performed widely in the USSR and abroad, appearing in almost all European countries as well as in the United States, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Japan. He was especially associated with the Romantic piano repertoire, from Chopin to Scriabin. In 1972 he became the first musician in the USSR to record all of Alexander Scriabin's piano sonatas; in 2000 a new digital recording of this cycle was issued by the German company Telos.
The beginning of his conducting career was connected with the Ulyanovsk Chamber Orchestra, which he led from 1978 to 1983. In 1983 he founded the New Moscow Chamber Orchestra after the earlier Moscow Chamber Orchestra founded by Rudolf Barshai had been reorganized and renamed the State Academic Chamber Orchestra.
With Zhukov as its leader, the orchestra performed a broad repertoire spanning different eras, from Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach to Igor Stravinsky. From 2004 to 2008, he worked as principal conductor of the municipal chamber orchestra of Nizhny Novgorod, the Nizhny Novgorod Soloists. He died in 2018 and was buried at Vagankovo Cemetery in Moscow.