Vladimir Ponkin

Vladimir Ponkin is a Russian principal conductor, Professor and a recipient of both the Golden Mask and People's Artist of Russia award from Irkutsk. He is also a 2001 medal recipient For the merits in development of Cuban region and a 2006 cross recipient of The Defender of Russia as well as For the Love and Faith to the Homeland medal both of which were 1st grade.

Vladimir Ponkin was a 1980 World Rupert Foundation Competition winner and same year got hired by the Chamber Opera Theater with which he traveled through Russia and into Riga and Alma-Ata. During the 1990s he became head conductor of the Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra and was invited by Pope John Paul II the same year to perform at Vatican City.

From 1990 to 2004 Ponkin was both the music director and principal conductor of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Russian Federation, a division of Moscow Philharmony. In 1996 he obtained the same position at the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre where he produced operas such as Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan and Giuseppe Verdi's Othello as well as ballets such as Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet and Mikhail Bronner's The Taming of The Shrew among others which brought him fame and success.