Background
Afkham was born in Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany) in 1983 and started his music education at age 15 at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, where he studied piano with James Avery.
Afkham was born in Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany) in 1983 and started his music education at age 15 at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, where he studied piano with James Avery.
In 2007 he finished his conducting studies with Nicolás Pasquet at the Hochschule für Musik "Franz Liszt" in Weimar.
Since 2010 he is also the assistant conductor of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra. He has conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, Chicago Civic Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Wiener Symphoniker, Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar, Bamberg Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Staatskapelle Weimar, as well as assistant to Bernard Haitink with the Royal Concertgebouw and Chicago Symphony orchestras, assistant guest conductor of the Baden-Wurttemberg Youth Orchestra, and principal conductor of the KHG-Symphony-Orchestra Freiburg. He is a conducting fellow of the Richard Wagner Association in Bayreuth, Germany.
Since 2014 he is the main conductor of the Orquesta Nacional de España (ONE).