James Ehnes was born in 1976 in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada. He began violin studies at the age of four, and 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, then in 1993 at The Juilliard School. He graduated from Juilliard in 1997, winning the Peter Mennin Prize for Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Music. 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 honored 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.
James Ehnes has rapidly established a pre-eminent reputation among concert violinists. He has performed with such renowned conductors as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sir Andrew Davis, Charles Dutoit, Ivan Fischer, Lorin Maazel, Michael Gielen, Hans Graf, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Richard Hickox, Paavo Järvi, Andrew Litton, Zdenek Macal, Sir Charles Mackerras, David Robertson, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Christian Thielemann, Bramwell Tovey, and Bobby McFerrin, appearing with orchestras throughout Europe, Asia, the United States, and Canada. Recent engagements include appearances in Europe with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Ulster Orchestra, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, the Orchestre de Lyon, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and the Finnish Radio Orchestra, in Asia with the NHK Symphony Orchestra (Tokyo), the Malaysian Philharmonic and the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and in North America with the major orchestras of New York, Cleveland, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Detroit, Minnesota, St. Paul, Houston, Dallas, Seattle, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, and Montreal.
Recitals have taken Mr. Ehnes to major cities around the world including London, Paris, Prague, Washington D.C., Tokyo, Osaka, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. He has also appeared at major international festivals including Chicago's Ravinia Festival, the Marlboro Festival, the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, the Tokyo Summer Music Festival, the Bermuda Festival, the Montreux Festival, the Festival de la Chaise-Dieu, the Festival Côte St. André, the Moritzburg Festival, and the Festival of the White Nights. As a chamber musician, he has performed in trio with cellist Jan Vogler and pianist Louis Lortie and has collaborated with such artists as Leif Ove Andsnes and Yo-Yo Ma.
"Mercifully free of affectation or vanity, yet blessed with as stunning a technique and as intriguing a musical personality as any violinist on the circuit, James Ehnes seems set to become one of classical music's biggest names. ...he produces a simply gorgeous palette of timbres - sometimes warm and velvety, sometimes with the pellucid clarity of lark song at dawn, elsewhere thrillingly powerful and incisive." (London Times review of Ehnes's Wigmore Hall debut, 23 February 2007)