Berliner Philharmoniker & Noah Bendix-Balgley
Biography Berliner Philharmoniker & Noah Bendix-Balgley
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 soloist on the Berliner Philharmoniker USA tour under the direction of Kirill Petrenko, a Japanese tour with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, his concerto debut at the Salzburg Easter Festival and debuts with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lyon, and the Iceland Symphony. His has performed with the Philharmonic Orchestras of Berlin, Dresden, Auckland, and Nagoya and the Shanghai, Utah, Quebec, Royal Danish, and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras. As soloist, he has collaborated with conductors including Kirill Petrenko, Manfred Honeck, Tugan Sokhiev, Marek Janowski, Gustavo Gimeno, Leonard Slatkin, Long Yu, Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, Marie Jacquot, and JoAnn Falletta. 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. Additionally, Noah’s album Mozart/Sinigaglia with Kirill Petrenko and the Berliner Philharmoniker was released in June 2024 to critical acclaim.
Upcoming highlights of the 2026/27 season include performances of his Klezmer Concerto with The Florida Orchestra under the baton of Michael Francis, as well as appearances with the Orquesta de Córdoba and Macau Orchestra.
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 frequently worldwide, including 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 in a special ‘Late Night ’ klezmer concert at the Philharmonie Berlin. A recording of this performance will be released in Fall 2026 on the Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings label.
A passionate chamber musician, Noah performs with the Rosamunde String Quartet that also 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 five albums. Noah’s festival highlights include the Seattle Music Festival, Bergen International Festival, Sarasota Music Festival, ChamberFest Cleveland, Zermatt Music Festival, Aix-en-Provence, La Jolla Summerfest and the Salzburg Festspiele.
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 and is Visiting Faculty Member at the Curtis Institute of Music. 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.
