Germany’s Barenboim-Said Akademie Orchestra Announces New Artistic Director

Conductor and double bassist Nabil Shehata assumed the role as of January 2025

The Barenboim-Said Akademie Orchestra has welcomed the German-Egyptian double bassist and conductor Nabil Shehata into its role of Artistic Director, effective as of this month.

Formed by Daniel Barenboim and Edward W. Said, the Barenboim-Said Akademie Orchestra opened in 2015 to continue the mission of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra founded in 1999 to unite young Arab and Israeli musicians. 

Shehata has been closely associated with the academy as a double bass professor since 2019. Additionally, he served as principal double bass with the Divan Orchestra for more than a decade. He has also won top awards at many international competitions including Munich’s ARD Music Competition. 

From 2003 to 2004, he was principal double bass with the Berlin State Opera Orchestra and held the same role in the Berlin Philharmonic until 2008. 

In 2006, Barenboim encouraged him to consider a career in conducting. Shehata has since appeared with the Berlin Radio Symphony, Munich Radio Orchestra, and Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg. 

After leading the Munich Chamber Opera as Music Director for several years, he later took on the same position with the Philharmonie Südwestfalen from 2019 until 2024. 

“I am very happy and grateful that Nabil Shehata has agreed to take on this wonderful task,” Barenboim said in the Akademie’s Instagram post. “I have known and appreciated him for very long and have had an intensive musical friendship with him for many years. He is the perfect person for this important role at the Barenboim-Said Akademie. His musicality and pedagogical skills are exceptional and I am sure that he will fulfil this task with great success.”

“I am looking forward to further developing the Academy’s orchestra with Prof Shehata,” added the Akademie’s Rector, Regula Rapp. “It is the field in which our students learn most intensively to listen to each other and make musical progress.”