SCMS Welcomes New Artistic Director James Ehnes

In 2011, after 17 years of performing at our festivals and 4 years serving as Associate Artistic Director, James Ehnes became SCMS' new Artistic Director. A Grammy and Juna Award-winning violinist of international acclaim, James knows our organization intimately. He leads us into a new era, while continuing to build on the foundation put in place by founding Artistic Director Toby Saks - and so many people in our community.

Biography

James Ehnes was born in 1976 in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada. He began violin studies at the age of four, at age nine he became a protégé of the noted Canadian violinist Francis Chaplin. He studied with Sally Thomas at the Meadowmount School of Music and from 1993 to 1997 at The Juilliard School, winning the Peter Mennin Prize for Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Music upon his graduation. Mr. Ehnes first gained national recognition in 1987 as winner of the Grand Prize in Strings at the Canadian Music Competition. The following year he won the First Prize in Strings at the Canadian Music Festival, the youngest musician ever to do so. At age 13, he made his orchestral solo debut with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. He has won numerous awards and prizes, including the first-ever Ivan Galamian Memorial Award, the Canada Council for the Arts' prestigious Virginia Parker Prize, and a 2005 Avery Fisher Career Grant. In October 2005, James was honoured by Brandon University with a Doctor of Music degree (honoris causa) and in July 2007 he became the youngest person ever elected as a Fellow to the Royal Society of Canada. On July 1st 2010 the Governor General of Canada appointed James a Member of the Order of Canada.

In the 2011-2012 season James maintains his challenging balance of concerto concerts, chamber music, and recitals as well as adding a new role to his repertoire, that of Artistic Director of the Seattle Chamber Music Society. Once again performances take him throughout North America, to England, Scotland, Germany, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway.

In the UK James will be heard with the Royal Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra. He returns to Vienna for Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Tonkünstler Orchestra, and performs Walton’s Violin Concerto with the Hamburg and Oslo philharmonic orchestras, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in Copenhagen, The Hague and Heerlen in The Netherlands, and Bernstein’s Serenade with the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa. James’s North American dates include concerts with the Houston, St. Louis, Baltimore, Pasadena, Utah, New World, Minnesota, Atlanta, Montréal, and Toronto symphony orchestras, as well as performances with the Sarasota Orchestra, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, and the Hamilton Philharmonic. He appears with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Charles Dutoit several times throughout the season, playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in Philadelphia, Strathmore, and at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

James appears in recital at London’s Wigmore Hall, in Bilboa, Spain, San Fransisco’s Herbst Theater, for Chamber Music Society of Detroit, in Edmonton, Brandon, Kingston, and with pianist Menahem Pressler for Chamber Music St. Cloud. An avid chamber musician, James will spend a week as part of a Quartet-in-Residency at Mercer University in Macon, GA, will perform with American Virtuosi Chamber Concerts in Fort Meyers, FL, and will once again perform throughout the Seattle Chamber Music Summer Festival.

James Ehnes plays the "Marsick" Stradivarius of 1715. He currently lives in Bradenton, Florida with his wife Kate.