Noa Wildschut

A veteran by the time she joined the roster of the Warner Classics label in the fall of 2016 at age 15, Dutch violinist Noa Wildschut was born in Hilversum on March 9, 2001. She started taking violin lessons when she was four, and the following year she joined a popular Dutch youth ensemble called the Fancy Fiddlers. Wildschut appeared live on Dutch television at six and made her debut in the Netherlands' top concert hall, the Concertgebouw, at seven. Augmenting lessons from Coosje Wijzenbeek with master classes by the likes of Menahem Pressler and Jaap van Zweden, Wildschut was ready for international competitions at age nine. She took the first prize at the 2010 International Louis Spohr Competition for Young Violinists in Weimar, Germany, competing against players as old as 14. Several other major Dutch national prizes followed. Wildschut gave her first formal recital in 2011 and was the subject of a Dutch television documentary, Noa11, the following year. Photogenic and spontaneous, she has also attracted the spotlight at large public events such as the Netherlands' Kingdom Concert 2013, where she played for 21 members of the Dutch royal family, and 2014 visit to the Netherlands by the Dalai Lama. She has made concerto appearances with top Dutch and foreign orchestras including the Rotterdam Philharmonic, I Solisti di Zagreb, and Kremerata Baltica. In 2015 she performed in Anne-Sophie Mutter's well-publicized Yellow Lounge nightclub concerts and made her recorded debut on a live Deutsche Grammophon album presenting one of those. The following year she was signed to Warner Classics, with an album of music by Mozart slated for release in 2017. She joined the Mutter's Virtuosi chamber group and planned to appear with that ensemble on tour in 2018. Wildschut attends the Amsterdam University of the Arts in the midst of this high-flying career, studying with Vera Beths. She plays a 1714 Giovanni Grancino violin with a custom-made bow.