Violinists Noah Bendix Balgley and Shanshan Yao are the Asheville Symphony Orchestra’s first guest artists in residence. Photo Credit Nikolaj Lund.
In last Monday’s (2/19) Tribune Papers (North Carolina), Christine Robinson writes, “In March 2024, the Asheville Symphony Orchestra presents its first-ever Artist Residency, celebrating the impact and legacy of the violin. For the inaugural year of this exciting new project, the Asheville Symphony is thrilled to welcome world-renowned violinists Noah Bendix-Balgley and Shanshan Yao … This first residency will include an entire week of events, many of which are open to the public. The main event, Violin Virtuosi, is part of the symphony’s Masterworks series and will take place on Saturday, March 16 … Bendix-Balgley and Yao will headline this all-violin, all-concerto program as a husband-and-wife duo … Darko Butorac will conduct. Born in Asheville, North Carolina, Bendix-Balgley is the First Concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic … Yao joined the New York Philharmonic in 2013 … The Asheville Symphony’s biennial residency initiative aims to honor and explore one musical instrument in collaboration with a preeminent musical artist. Through an exploration of genres, instrumentation, solo performance, and more, this week-long residency offers programmatic content for a wide range of audiences with an emphasis on education. Each residency allows … audiences to discover new ways to appreciate and understand a musical instrument and its role in an orchestra.”
