Kristi Helberg

Photography by Shervin Lainez

Has played with The Knights since: 2006

Violinist Kristi Helberg is a musician of intrepid diversity, from living and performing on a biodynamic farm in Canada to performing in the Salzburg Festival under the patronage and tutelage of the Vienna Philharmonic with the Orchestral Institute at Attergau. She currently enjoys performing regularly with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the New York City Ballet Orchestra. As a core member of The Knights, she was recently awarded an Innovation Fund Grant with which she is pairing musicians of the Knights with formerly incarcerated individuals in a dialogue about music and its meaning in our lives.

Ms. Helberg was awarded degrees from Rice University where she studied with the late Kenneth Goldsmith and she also studied with Glenn Dicterow at the Manhattan School of Music’s Orchestral Program.  She resides in New York City with her daughter and two Norwich Terriers with whom she is a member of the Ryder’s Alley Trencher-Fed Society, a working terrier group that hunts rats in NYC. She sings with the Kvasova Folk Singing Club, featuring music from the Don Cossacks, Georgian, Ukrainian, and Balkan folk singing traditions, and is currently pursuing studies in nursing at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University.