New York, NY — March 3, 2025 — The 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY), one of New York’s leading cultural venues, presents the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra & Noah Bendix-Balgley, violin on Tuesday, March 18, 2025 at 7:30pm ET on the Geffen Stage at Kaufmann Concert Hall. Tickets start at $40 and are available at https://www.92ny.org/event/orpheus-and-bendix-balgley.
Longtime favorite Orpheus Chamber Orchestra returns to the 92NY stage with Noah Bendix-Balgley, concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic and a leading soloist and chamber musician. A lifelong champion and performer of klezmer music, he joins Orpheus to perform a concerto based on traditional klezmer melodies and folk-inspired classical works by Brahms and Bartók.
The program will include:
CAROLINE SHAW Entr’acte
NOAH BENDIX-BALGLEY Fidl-Fantazye: A Klezmer Concerto (orch. S. Adler)
BARTÓK Romanian Folk Dances for Violin and Orchestra
(arr. D. Scheindlin)
BRAHMS Selections from 21 Hungarian Dances
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is a radical experiment in musical democracy, proving for over fifty years what happens when exceptional artists gather with total trust in each other and faith in the creative process. Orpheus began in 1972 when cellist Julian Fifer assembled a group of New York freelancers in their early twenties to play orchestral repertoire as if it were chamber music. In that age of co-ops and communes, the idealistic Orpheans snubbed the “corporate” path of symphony orchestras and learned how to play, plan and promote concerts as a true collective, with leadership roles rotating from the very first performance.
It’s one thing for the four players of a string quartet to lean in to the group sound and react spontaneously, but with 20 or 30 musicians together, the complexities and payoffs get magnified exponentially. Within its first decade, Orpheus made Carnegie Hall its home and became a global sensation through its tours of Europe and Asia. Its catalog of recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch and other labels grew to include more than 70 albums that still stand as benchmarks of the chamber orchestra repertoire, including Haydn symphonies, Mozart concertos, and twentieth-century gems by Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Ravel, and Bartók.
The sound of Orpheus is defined by its relationships, and guest artists have always been crucial partners in the process. Orpheus brings the best out of its collaborators, and those bonds deepen over time, as heard in the long arc of music-making with soloists such as Richard Goode, Vadim Gluzman, Anne Akiko Meyers, and Branford Marsalis, and in the commitment to welcoming next-generation artists including Nobuyuki Tsujii, Tine Thing Helseth, and Caleb Teicher. By partnering with jazz legends Brad Mehldau, Wayne Shorter, and Vijay Iyer, as well as actors Christine Baranski and Liev Schreiber, Orpheus expands the boundaries of what a chamber orchestra can achieve. Relationships with composers like Jessie Montgomery, Billy Childs, and Fazil Say have been another crucial way Orpheus stretches itself, commissioning multiple world premieres each year. Having proven the power of direct communication and open-mindedness within the ensemble, the only relationship Orpheus has never had any use for is one with a conductor.
At home in New York and in the many concert halls it visits in the U.S. and beyond, Orpheus begins its next fifty years with a renewed commitment to enriching and reflecting the surrounding community. It will continue its groundbreaking work with those living with dementia and their caregivers through Orpheus Reflections, and the Orpheus Music Academy as well as the Orpheus Leadership Institute spread the positive lessons of trust and democracy to young musicians and those in positions of power. Each year, Access Orpheus reaches 1,500 public school students in all five boroughs of New York City, bringing music into their communities and welcoming them to Carnegie Hall. Always evolving as artists and leaders, the Orpheus musicians carry this communal legacy forward, counting on their shared artistry and mutual respect to make music and effect change.
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.
Bendix-Balgley 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 SzepsZnaider, 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. Bendix-Balgley recently curated and presented a week-long celebration of the violin as part of an artist residency with his hometown Asheville Symphony, including a solo violin recital and an all-concerto program. 2024/2025 season 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.
Bendix-Balgley 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, Bendix-Balgley 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 at the Philharmonie Berlin.
A passionate chamber musician, Bendix-Balgley 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 Orchestra, and with the multi-genre septet Philharmonix, which features members of both the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras. Bendix-Balgley’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, Bendix-Balgley 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.
A gifted educator, Bendix-Balgley teaches at the Karajan Academy of the Berliner Philharmoniker. He is on the faculty of the Morningside Music Bridge program, where he is 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 Carl Nielsen Competition.
About The 92nd Street Y, New York: The 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY) is a world-class center for the arts and innovation, a convener of ideas, and an incubator for creativity. 92NY offers extensive classes, courses and events online including live concerts, talks and master classes; fitness classes for all ages; 250+ art classes, and parenting workshops for new moms and dads. The 92nd Street Y, New York is transforming the way people share ideas and translate them into action all over the world. All of 92NY's programming is built on a foundation of Jewish values, including the capacity of civil dialogue to change minds; the potential of education and the arts to change lives; and a commitment to welcoming and serving people of all ages, races, religions, and ethnicities. For more information, visit www.92NY.org.
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92ny.org/event/orpheus-and-bendix-balgley

• March 18 from 7:30 to 9:30 pm

  March 18, 2025 07:30 to March 18, 2025 09:30
• Kaufmann Concert Hall
  , New York, NY

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• Contact Michelle Tabnick for more information
  646-765-4773 or [email protected]
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