People's Artist of the USSR (1991), a winner of the State Award of the USSR (1986) and four State Awards of the Russian Federation (1993, 1995, 2000, and 2013).
Yuri Bashmet has been the art director and the chief conductor of the Russian State Symphonic Orchestra  "Young Russia" since August, 2002;
A virtuoso violist, he has made a viola one of the leaders of modern concert performance and gained world recognition and authority. He has cooperated with outstanding conductors, such as Raphael Kubelik, Seyji Ozava, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, sir Colin Davis, John Elliot Gardiner, Mstislav Rostropovich, Valery Gergiev and others.
Yuri Bashmet was born in Rostov-on-Don on January 24, 1953. He graduated from the Lvov High Special Music School in 1971 and the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory in 1976.
He started his concert career as a violist in 1976 and debuted as a conductor in 1985. In 1986 Yuri Bashmet founded the chamber orchestra Soloists of Moscow.
In 1992 Yuri Bashmet organized a new orchestra, which brought together graduates and graduate students of the Moscow Conservatory.
Since 1978 he has taught in the Moscow Conservatory, where he created and headed the experimental viola chair in 1996. From 1980 Yuri Bashmet held master classes in Japan, Europe, America and Hong Kong; he taught at summer courses in Academies of Kidzhan (Siena, Italy) and in Tours (France). Yuri Bashmet leads an active concert life and performs in lots of countries around the world. 
He is the founder and the jury chairman of Russia's first and only International Viola Competition in Moscow, the president of the L. Tertis International Competition of Violists in England, a judge of violists competitions  in Munich and Paris and an honorary academician of the London Arts Academy.
Yuri Bashmet is also known as a participant of numerous charity events of world scale, the founder of the International Charity Fund and the International D. Shostakovich Award for outstanding achievements in the field of world art.