Noah Bendix-Balgley enjoys a wide-ranging musical life as a violinist. Since 2014 he has been first concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic; he also performs as a soloist and chamber musician in leading concert venues worldwide. He is especially acclaimed for his clear and expressive sound, and has collaborated with orchestras including the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Orchestre national de Lyon, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (of which he was concertmaster from 2011 to 2015), and with conductors such as Gustavo Gimeno, Manfred Honeck, Marie Jacquot, Marek Janowski and Leonard Slatkin.
Highlights of the 2025/26 season included his debuts with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, the Filharmonia Narodowa, the Orchestre National de Lille, the Toledo Symphony Orchestra and the New York Youth Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
As a renowned interpreter of traditional klezmer music, he performs with ensembles such as Brave Old World and regularly gives workshops. In 2016 he gave the premiere of his own klezmer violin concerto, Fidl-Fantazye, with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and since then he has performed the work with orchestras including the China Philharmonic Orchestra and the Kammerakademie Potsdam, and at festivals including the Mainly Mozart Festival and the Styriarte. He presented the chamber orchestra version with colleagues from the Berlin Philharmonic.
He has appeared at international festivals such as the Lucerne Festival, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, the Bergen International Festival and the Sarasota Music Festival.
His chamber music partners include Kit Armstrong, Kirill Gerstein, Amihai Grosz, Augustin Hadelich, Robert Levin and Tabea Zimmermann. He is also a member of the Rosamunde String Quintet and of the genre-crossing septet Philharmonix, which tours internationally and has recorded three albums with Deutsche Grammophon.
He released his first solo album, Mozart — Sinigaglia, in 2024 with Kirill Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic.
Noah Bendix-Balgley was born in Asheville, North Carolina, played for Yehudi Menuhin at the age of nine and studied at Indiana University and the University of Music and Theatre in Munich. His most important mentors were Mauricio Fuks, Christoph Poppen and Ana Chumachenco. He is a prize-winner of the Concours Reine Elisabeth (2009), the Long-Thibaud Competition and the Andrea Postacchini Violin Competition. He teaches at the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic.
