James Ehnes

James Ehnes had already established himself as a formidable talent well before turning twenty, placing him among today's leading violinists. His extensive and expanding discography includes two Grammy Awards. During 2024 he appeared on accounts of Stravinsky's Violin Concerto under Sir Andrew Davis and of John Williams' Violin Concerto under Stéphane Denève.

Born January 27, 1976, in Brandon, Manitoba, into a household steeped in music, Ehnes encountered numerous instruments in childhood yet gravitated toward the violin. Lessons commenced at age four with his father, a trumpet instructor at Brandon University; at nine he transferred to the tutelage of François Chaplin, a noted violin instructor also on the Brandon University faculty. While working with Chaplin he captured the 1987 grand prize for strings in the Canadian Music Competition and, the following year, first prize for strings at the Canadian Music Festival, becoming its youngest recipient. At the Meadowmount School summer program in upstate New York he came under the guidance of Sally Thomas, whose Juilliard School affiliation prompted him to enroll there to continue his studies. At Juilliard he valued Thomas's unconventional teaching approach, which allowed him latitude to develop personal solutions to technical and interpretive challenges.

In 1995 Ehnes entered into a recording agreement with Telarc Records and issued his debut album devoted to the Paganini Caprices. Several years prior to his 1997 graduation from Juilliard, where he received the Peter Mennin Prize for Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Music, manager Walter Homburger emerged from retirement to oversee his career. Ehnes collaborates regularly with foremost conductors and orchestras worldwide; his recital successes have likewise fostered chamber-music partnerships with pianists Leif Ove Andsnes and Louis Lortie as well as cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Steven Doane. Standout releases encompass a 2000 collection of Debussy, Ravel, and Saint-Saëns pieces with Wendy Chen and the 2011 account of Bruch Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 3 with Charles Dutoit and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal.

Ehnes established the Ehnes Quartet in 2010, received induction into the Order of Canada that same year, and has directed the Seattle Chamber Music Society. Throughout the 2010s he ranked among the most prominent violinists on both sides of the Atlantic, issuing multiple albums in all but one year of the decade and five releases in 2017 alone. Overall he has accumulated 11 Juno Awards and two Grammys, the latter for Barber, Korngold, Walton: Violin Concertos and James Newton Howard, Aaron Jay Kernis: Violin Concertos.

Three albums appeared in 2019, among them a fresh reading of Beethoven's first three violin sonatas with pianist Andrew Armstrong on the Onyx label. When performance venues closed in the early 2020s, Ehnes mounted a streaming series titled "Recitals from Home" before returning to the studio and resuming his customary output. In 2024 the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Andrew Davis supported his recording of Stravinsky's Violin Concerto, while the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra led by Stéphane Denève accompanied his recording of John Williams' Violin Concerto.