Noah Bendix-Balgley

Noah Bendix-Balgley has thrilled and moved audiences around the world with his violin performances. Laureate of the 2009 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, he also won 3rd prize and a special prize for creativity at the 2008 Long-Thibaud International Competition in Paris. He was awarded 1st Prize and a special prize for best Bach interpretation at the 14th International Violin Competition “Andrea Postacchini” in Fermo, Italy. Noah has appeared as a soloist with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France (Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris), the Orchestre National de Belgique (Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels), the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie (Belgium), the Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana (Italy), the Orchester Jakobsplatz Munich, and the Asheville Symphony (USA). He performed the premiere of a rediscovered Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra by Carl Stamitz at the German Viola Congress in Muenster, Germany. He has performed in Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Iceland, China, Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States.

Noah is a passionate and experienced chamber musician. In 2008, he was invited  to participate in Chamber Music Connects the World, a program of the Kronberg Academy. In Kronberg, he worked and performed with Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Gary Hoffman and Lynn Harrell. Noah is the first violinist of the Athlos String Quartet, which studies in the Meisterklasse chamber music program at the Munich Hochschule  with Hariolf Schlichtig and Christoph Poppen. The Athlos Quartet won a special prize at the 2009 Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Competition in Berlin and is supported by the Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now Foundation. Noah has performed chamber music with artists such as Ana Chumachenco, Wen-Sinn Yang, Hariolf Schlichtig, Ingolf Turban and Estzer Haffner.

In 2008, Noah was the concertmaster of the Moritzburg Festival Orchestra  in Dresden, Germany. As a member of the Weinberger Chamber Orchestra in Switzerland since 2007, he has worked with Gabor Takacs-Nagy, Steven Isserlis, and Julian Bliss. In July 2008, Noah won a  Hochschule Concerto Competition and performed the Brahms Double Concerto with the Munich Hochschulorchester. He won top prizes at the 2005 WAMSO Young Artist Competition and the 2004 American String Teacher’s Association National Solo Competition. He received first prize as well as an audience prize at the 2005 Indiana University Travel Grant Competition. In 2002, Noah won the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra Concerto Competition.

Noah earned his postgraduate Meisterklasse diploma for violin in 2008 from Hochschule für Musik und Theater Munich, where he studied with Professor Christoph Poppen. In 2006, he received a Bachelor of Music degree with highest distinction from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he was a student of Professor Mauricio Fuks and also a Wells Scholar. He has performed in solo masterclasses for Gidon Kremer, Ida Haendel, Zakhar Bron, Joseph Silverstein, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Gyorgy Pauk, and Pamela Frank. He attended the Perlman Chamber Music Workshop, the Verbier Academy, the Sarasota Music Festival, the New York String Orchestra Seminar, and London Masterclasses. He has been coached by Itzhak Perlman, Janos Starker, Donald Weilerstein, and Jaime Laredo.

Born in Asheville, North Carolina in 1984, Noah began playing violin at age 4. At age 9, he played for Lord Yehudi Menuhin in Switzerland. From 1995 to 1997, Noah studied violin with Anne Crowden while attending The Crowden School in Berkeley, California. There he performed the premiere of Recitative and Freilekhs, a piece for violin and chamber orchestra written for him by Arkadi Serper. Noah was also featured as a soloist on the 1997 Crowden School tour of England and Scotland.

In his spare time, Noah plays klezmer music and composes. He has played with world-renowned klezmer groups such as Brave Old World, and has taught klezmer violin at workshops in Europe and in the United States.

Noah plays a Lorenzo Storioni violin (Cremona, 1779) from the Deutsche Musikinstrumentenfonds (German Music Instrument Fund) on loan from the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben.

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photos by Max Poppers