Violinist, conductor, educator and scholar, Iman Khosrowpour’s career is uniquely and richly diversified.  He has given concerts in Japan, Germany, Czech Republic, Canada, Brazil, and throughout the United States, and has given violin masterclasses in Germany, China, South Korea, Japan and Paraguay.  He made his European debut with the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in Brno, Czech Republic and performed Mozart Violin Concerto No. 5 at the world-renowned Konzerthaus in Vienna, Austria. Committed to encouraging new music, he gave the world premiere of the Daniel Luzko Violin Concerto in Asunción, Paraguay. He has performed extensively with the Grammy Award-winning Boston Modern Orchestra Project and the Albany Symphony Orchestra.

 

A passionate educator, Iman maintains a dynamic and highly successful private violin/viola teaching studio in his hometown of Irvine and has taught at Orange County School for the Arts. His students have been concertmasters and members of regional youth orchestras as well as winners of international and regional competitions. They have gone on to study at Princeton, Columbia, Northwestern and Chapman Universities; University of Southern California; University of California Los Angeles; California State University Long Beach; and Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, and have performed at Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House and Segerstrom Hall. He is Founder and Music Director of Irvine Music Festival, an international summer program which attracts world-class faculty and guest artists.

 

From 2012-2021 Iman was the violin/viola instructor and conductor of the Symphony Orchestra at Irvine Valley College (IVC), annually leading several concerts and often performing as soloist with the orchestra and the small ensemble he founded, The Ill-Tempered Chamber Players. In 2021 IVC created the Iman Khosrowpour Orchestra Strings Endowed Fellowship in recognition of his ten years of outstanding service to the institution and community. He conducted the District Honors High School Orchestra concerts of Irvine and Capistrano in 2016 and 2020, respectively, at the world-renowned Segerstrom Hall, and has adjudicated for numerous high school orchestra festivals in Irvine and the surrounding areas.

 

Iman continues to develop his conducting career. Under the auspices of a private research grant he spent the 2021-2022 season in Berlin, Germany, connecting with major symphony orchestras in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Zurich and elsewhere, and furthering his understanding of how music organizations and educational institutions function within their respective societies. He  has conducted the Lviv National Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Sinfonietta and Leipzig Symphony Orchestra. His conducting mentors are Neeme and Paavo Järvi, Ulrich Windfuhr and Carl St. Clair.

 

In addition to his music accomplishments, Iman earned a Master of Arts degree in East Asian Studies from Harvard University. He attended the Inter-University Center for Advanced Japanese Studies in Yokohama, Japan and worked as a translator for the Saito Kinen Matsumoto Festival led by Seiji Ozawa. Iman received Harvard’s esteemed Joseph Fletcher Memorial Award for Outstanding Graduation Thesis, writing on the film music of Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu.

 

Born in Tehran, Iran and immigrating to the United States as a child, Iman began violin studies at age of eleven and quickly displayed promise, two years later becoming a student of Erick Friedman, prized pupil of Jascha Heifetz. He made his concerto debut with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra at age  sixteen. A graduate of the Peabody Institute, Rice University, and New England Conservatory, he studied violin with Mr. Friedman, William R. Kennedy, Sylvia Rosenberg, Kathleen Winkler and Masuko Ushioda, and chamber music with members of the Juilliard, Orion, and Borromeo string quartets.

 

Iman’s other interests include international film and cuisines, travel and languages. He speaks Spanish, German, Farsi and Japanese.