Assistant Concertmaster
Violinist Anton Shelepov’s multifaceted career has gained him praise from critics: “His technical skill, combined with his superb gift of musical interpretation, was dazzling” (The Flint Journal); "Shelepov, the compact powerhouse whose fiddle floated and soared...got his shining hour (42 minutes, to be exact) at Friday night's Masterworks concert" (Lansing City Pulse). Native Siberian, Anton began playing violin at the age of four and went on to earn master’s and doctoral degrees in Violin Performance from St. Petersburg Conservatory and Michigan State University, respectively. He is a winner in various international competitions including Gartow Stiftung String Quartet (St. Petersburg, Russia), Tadeusz Wroński Solo Violin (Warsaw, Poland), and William Byrd Young Artist (Flint, MI). He is the recipient of the prestigious David Oistrakh Award from Rostropovich’s “Slava” International Foundation.
As a soloist with orchestras and as a chamber musician, Anton has appeared in both Americas, Europe, and Russia. He collaborated with prominent composers of our time including Rodion Shchedrin, Augusta Read Thomas, John Corigliano, and Peter Dyson, whose works he premiered and recorded in Russia, France, and the U.S. As a founding member of Krasni String Quartet, he recorded four CDs for the British OLYMPIA label featuring sets of string quartets by Schebalin and Taneev.
A devoted educator, Anton has been a faculty member of the North Carolina Chamber Music Institute and the West Virginia State University. He enjoyed performing innovative outreach programs for thousands of students nationwide annually as a member of the award-winning Montclaire String Quartet in Residence at WVSU.
Before joining the BPO as Assistant Concertmaster in 2024, Anton served as Concertmaster of Lansing Symphony and the West Virginia Symphony, and as a member of the North Carolina Symphony. Currently, he spends his summers as a member of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra. Anton has also performed with the Baltimore, Detroit, and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras, working under the batons of distinguished conductors such as Sir Andrew Davis, Manfred Honeck, Leonard Slatkin, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Peter Oundjian.