Jennifer Pike

Already a violin star as a preteen, Jennifer Pike has gone on to an international career in adulthood. She has shown a commitment to contemporary music, commissioning several new works.
Pike was born on November 9, 1989, in Stockport, near Manchester, England. She is of British and Polish background and has often performed Polish music, new and old. Pike took up the violin at five, and at eight, she successfully auditioned for a place at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester, an institution that normally serves much older students. At ten, she performed for Prince Charles at the Royal Opera House, and at 12, she won the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition; she remains one of its youngest winners. Pike studied at the Guildhall School of Music, where she was the youngest musician ever to pursue the course in which she was enrolled, and then moved on to Oxford, where she graduated in 2012 with first-class honors. From 2008 to 2010, she combined her studies with duties as a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist. Since her graduation, Pike has been an internationally prominent violinist, making appearances with all of the BBC orchestras, the London Philharmonic (with which she toured Mexico), the Brussels Philharmonic, and the Singapore Symphony, among many other groups. She has played chamber music with a variety of prestigious collaborators, including Anne-Sophie Mutter, Igor Levit, and Mahan Esfahani.
Pike signed with the Chandos label even before graduating from Oxford and released her debut album, a recital of works by Franck, Debussy, and Ravel, in 2011. She has gone on to record about a dozen albums, nearly all for Chandos, including, in 2020, an album containing the original violin-and-piano version of Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending as well as violin sonatas by Vaughan Williams and Elgar. Pike has been associated with several charities that work to provide musical opportunities for young people of diverse backgrounds, and she has been acting ambassador for The Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts. ~ James Manheim