Noah Bendix-Balgley, Violin
Noah Bendix-Balgley enjoys a wide-ranging musical life as a violinist. He is First Concertmaster of the Berliner Philharmoniker and tours both as a soloist and as a chamber musician. His clear and heartfelt personal sound has moved listeners around the world.
Noah appears frequently as soloist with leading international orchestras, as well as in recital at the world’s finest concert halls. Recent highlights include his concerto debut at Carnegie Hall as the featured soloist on the Berliner Philharmoniker USA tour under the direction of Kirill Petrenko, a Japanese tour with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, and concerto appearances with the Philharmonic Orchestras of Berlin, Dresden, Auckland, and Nagoya. He has also performed with the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra and the Shanghai, Utah, Quebec, Royal Danish, and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras. He has collaborated with conductors including Kirill Petrenko, Manfred Honeck, Marek Janowski, Gustavo Gimeno, Leonard Slatkin, Long Yu, Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, Marie Jacquot, Fabien Gabel, and JoAnn Falletta. He has toured with Apollo’s Fire Orchestra performing on period instruments, and with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. Noah recently curated and presented a week-long celebration of the violin as part of his Artist Residency with his hometown Asheville Symphony, including a solo violin recital and an all-concerto program. Upcoming 24/25 highlights include debuts with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Orquestra de Valencia, and the Orchestre National de Lyon. Noah’s album Mozart/Sinigaglia with Kirill Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic was released in June 2024 to critical acclaim.
Noah is a renowned performer of traditional klezmer music, a musical style that has been part of his life since an early age. He has performed with groups such as Brave Old World, and has taught at many klezmer workshops. In 2016, Noah composed and premiered his own klezmer violin concerto, Fidl-Fantazye, with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, where he was concertmaster from 2011 to 2015. Since the premiere, he has also performed the work with the Baltimore Symphony, China Philharmonic, Guangzhou Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, New World Symphony, and the Kammerakademie Potsdam. He presented the chamber orchestra version of the work with members of the Berliner Philharmoniker in a special ‘Late Night ’klezmer concert at the Philharmonie Berlin.
A passionate chamber musician, Noah performs in several fixed ensembles: in a trio with pianist Robert Levin and cellist Peter Wiley, with the Rosamunde String Quartet that includes members of the New York Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony, and with the multi-genre septet Philharmonix, which features members of both the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras. Philharmonix tours worldwide, has an ongoing multi-year residency at Vienna’s Konzerthaus, and has released three albums on Deutsche Grammophon. Noah’s festival highlights include the Seattle Music Festival, Bergen International Festival, Sarasota Music Festival, Brevard Music Festival, ChamberFest Cleveland, Zermatt Music Festival, Aix-en-Provence, and La Jolla Summerfest.
Born in Asheville, North Carolina, Noah began playing the violin at age 4. At age 9, he played for Lord Yehudi Menuhin. He graduated from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and the Munich Hochschule. His principal mentors were Mauricio Fuks, Christoph Poppen and Ana Chumachenco. A laureate of the 2009 Queen Elisabeth Competition, he also won top prizes at the Long-Thibaud Competition in France and the Postacchini Competition in Italy.
Now a gifted educator himself, Noah teaches at the Karajan Academy of the Berliner Philharmoniker. He is on the faculty of the Morningside Music Bridge program, where he also a member of the Advisory Council. He has served on the juries of the Menuhin Competition, the Indianapolis International Violin Competition, and as chair of the violin jury at the the Carl Nielsen Competition.