Since that time, the Moscow Soloists have performed in many other prestigious venues, including tours in London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and Tokyo. Additionally, tours have taken the orchestra to Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Israel, Greece and Turkey.
The original Moscow Soloists were founded by Yuri Bashmet in 1986. After several years of touring and recording, the musicians in the orchestra emigrated from Russia, while Mr. Bashmet remained in Moscow and re-established the ensemble with an entirely new group of virtuoso players.
Violist Yuri Bashmet is widely recognized as one of the leading string players in the world. He launched his international career in 1976 when he took first prize at the International Viola Competition in Munich and has since performed in recital and with the foremost orchestras and conductors in nearly every major European and North American music center.
The Times described him as "without doubt, one of the world's greatest living musicians" and he was named "Instrumentalist of the Year" at the 1994 International Classical Music Awards.
In 1988 Bashmet made his first American appearances in two recitals that were critically hailed as the high point of Boston's Soviet-American "Making Music Together" Festival. He has returned to North America many times for orchestral and recital engagements, including his Carnegie Hall recital debut in 1995.
Mr. Bashmet's exceptional artistry has inspired many composers to write for him, and, as a result, several major works have been added to the viola repertoire. He enjoys an especially close and productive relationship with Alfred Schnittke, who wrote his Viola Concerto for Mr. Bashmet.
Mr. Bashmet was born in 1953 in Rostov-on-Don in Russia and spent his childhood in Lvov, Ukraine. He began his studies at the Moscow Conservatory when he was 18, first with Vadim Bovisovsky, the violist of the Beethoven Quartet, and later with Feodor Druzhinin. He went on to become the youngest person ever appointed to a professorship at the Moscow Conservatory.