Tolibkhon Shahidi
Tolibkhon Shahidi (born 13 March 1946) is a Tajik composer, conductor, and film composer. He was born in Dushanbe, Tajik SSR, and graduated from the Moscow Conservatory named after Pyotr Tchaikovsky. He is a People's Artist of the Republic of Tajikistan, a recipient of the Rudaki State Prize of Tajikistan, and a member of the Unions of Composers and Cinematographers of Russia.
Shahidi is the son of Ziyodullo Shahidi, described as the founder of modern classical music in Tajikistan. His sons are the producer Tabriz Shahidi, born in 1975, and the investor Hofiz Shahidi.
His best-known concert works include the symphonic poems Celebration and Sado, Symphony No. 2, Concerto Grosso Nos. 2 and 3, Piano Concerto No. 3, and Taj Mahal. He wrote the operas Keeper of the Fire and Amir Ismail, as well as the fairy-tale operas The Caliph-Stork, Little Longnose, Magic Apples, and Beauty and the Beast. His ballet scores include The Death of the Moneylender, Khayyam's Rubaiyat, and Yusuf and Zuleikha.
Shahidi also composed music for stage productions including Oedipus, Cabal of Hypocrites, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, The Lizard, and Rudaki, and wrote scores for films produced by Tajikfilm and Mahmalbaf-film. His film work includes Forward, Guardsmen! (1969), Brief Encounters in a Long War (1975), The Woman from Afar (1978), Double-Barrel Shooting (1979), Khayyam's Rubaiyat (1980), Contact (1981), If You Love... (1982), Trap for Jackals (1985), The Criminal and the Lawyers (1995), and The Two-Legged Horse (2008).
His author concerts were held at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory in 1999, conducted by Sergei Skripka, and at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in 2006, with the Yevgeny Svetlanov State Academic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Slutsky; the soloists were Hibla Gerzmava and Ekaterina Mechetina. His works have received premieres at the Moscow Autumn and From the Avant-Garde to the Present Day contemporary-music festivals in St. Petersburg, and have also been performed in the United States, Austria, Germany, Japan, Iran, and the CIS republics. In spring 2026, an author concert marking his eightieth birthday took place at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, conducted by Valery Gergiev.
Shahidi won an international contemporary-music competition in Glassboro, New Jersey, in 1987, and received a gold medal from the Moscow Union of Composers in 2012. His distinctions also include the Lenin Komsomol Prize in 1986, the title People's Artist of Tajikistan, the Rudaki State Prize of Tajikistan, the Order of the Badge of Honour, and an award at an international film festival in Belgium.