One of a few Taiwanese conductors to enjoy an international career,
Kimbo Ishii (also known as Kimbo Ishii-Eto) has been a major presence in both symphonic and dramatic performances in the city of Magdeburg, Germany.
Ishii trained as a violinist, studying with Walter Barylli in Vienna and Dorothy DeLay in New York, before switching to conducting at Mannes College of Music and studying with Michael Charry. He also took lessons from
Simon Rattle and was awarded two conducting fellowships at the Tanglewood Music Festival.
Ishii has performed extensively with both Asian orchestras, including the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, the China Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra, and the
NHK Symphony Orchestra, and Western groups, including the
Boston Symphony Chamber Players, the
Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, and the
Dresden Philharmonic. He has served as music director of the
Cayuga Chamber Orchestra in Ithaca, New York, and the Amarillo Symphony Orchestra in Texas.
Ishii moved to Germany in 2006 to take a post as Kapellmeister of the Berlin Komische Oper; he speaks English, German, Mandarin, and Japanese fluently. In 2010 he became general music director of the Magdeburg Theatre, where he has conducted new productions of
Janacek's Jenufa,
Wagner's Tristan und Isolde,
Verdi's Macbeth and Un ballo in maschera,
Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier,
Mozart's Così fan tutte,
Puccini's La Bohème, and
Korngold's Die tote Stadt, as well as
Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story.
Ishii has also led the Magdeburg Philharmonic Orchestra, giving the first German performance of Zdenek Fibich's opera Die Braut von Messina with them. From 2009 to 2013
Ishii was principal guest conductor of the Osaka Symphony Orchestra in Japan.
A performance of the Fibich opera was recorded for CPO, and he recorded the two piano concertos of Hermann Goetz with pianist
Davide Cabassi for the Naxos label in 2016. That year,
Ishii served as conductor for performances by the Magdeburg Philharmonic with the 92-year-old
Menachem Pressler, who was returning to his hometown for the first time since fleeing after Kristallnacht with his family 78 years before. Those performances, of Mozart piano concertos, were released on the CAvi-Music label in 2017.