Shamgon Kazhgaliev
Shamgon Kazhgaliev was a Kazakh, Soviet conductor, dombrist, and music educator. He was born on June 15, 1927, in the village of Uyalikum, now in West Kazakhstan Region. He lost his parents early and grew up in an orphanage. As a child, he won a regional music competition for dombra players; at twenty, he became a laureate of a republican competition.
In 1950, Kazhgaliev graduated from the folk-instrument faculty of the Kurmangazy Kazakh Conservatory in Almaty. He studied dombra with K. Zhantleuov, violin with I. Lesman, and conducting with Akhmet Zhubanov and L. Shargorodsky. In 1964, he completed the opera and symphonic conducting program at the Leningrad Conservatory, where he studied with E. Grikurov.
Kazhgaliev worked with the Kurmangazy Kazakh State Orchestra of Folk Instruments in several periods from 1950 onward, progressing from orchestra musician and solo instrumentalist to conductor. From 1952, he was its artistic director and chief conductor, succeeding its founder, Akhmet Zhubanov. Under his leadership, the orchestra won a gold medal at the 1953 World Festival of Youth and Students in Bucharest. He expanded its repertoire through the study and performance of traditional music, including kyuis by Kurmangazy, Dauletkerey, Dina Nurpeisova, and Sugur, as well as works by Glinka, Beethoven, Mozart, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, and Shostakovich.
With folklorist Bolat Sarybayev, he helped find and restore nine Kazakh musical instruments that had been lost or forgotten, and introduced them into the orchestra. He prepared dozens of teaching programs and repertory guides, arranged more than 200 works by Kazakh, Russian, and other composers for folk orchestra, and wrote scores for 20 kyuis from Zhubanov’s musical legacy. From 1968 to 1971, he led the State Symphony Orchestra of the Kazakh SSR, then returned to the Kurmangazy orchestra. He taught at the Kurmangazy Kazakh Conservatory from 1970 and became a professor in 1980.
From 1992, Kazhgaliev was artistic director of the Tattimbet Karaganda Academic Orchestra of Folk Instruments. He developed a repertoire drawing on regional folklore and Kazakh, Russian, and international classical music. Under his direction, the orchestra gave concert performances of the operas Abai and Kyz Zhibek with a folk orchestra. Kazhgaliev was named People's Artist of the Kazakh SSR in 1967 and People's Artist of the USSR in 1985, and received the State Prize of the Kazakh SSR in 1982. He died in Almaty on May 2, 2015.