Janine Jansen
violin
Janine Jansen actually wanted to play the cello like her brother, but her parents persuaded her to learn the violin to “bring a little more variety into the family”, says Jansen. The musician and her instrument were a perfect match: after her debut, the then 19-year-old rose quickly up the career ladder. Since her Concertgebouw debut in 1997, she has been a star in her native Netherlands and one of the most sought-after violinists of her generation world-wide. She made her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker at the Waldbühne concert in June 2006 under the baton of Neeme Järvi.
Janine Jansen studied under Coosje Wijzenbeek, Philipp Hirshhorn and Boris Belkin. After her acclaimed debut in London in November 2002 with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the violinist was invited to the Proms the next year as a BBC “New Generation Artist”. Since then, she has performed there regularly – including in 2014 at the legendary “Last Night", which was broadcast all over the world on television. Today, Janine Jansen appears on the world’s major concert stages, including as a “Perspectives Artist” at Carnegie Hall in New York, and as Artist in Residence at London’s Wigmore Hall. Other residencies have taken her to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Tonhalle-Orchestra Zurich, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and the hr-Sinfonieorchester. Janine Jansen, who founded the International Chamber Music Festival Utrecht and directed it until 2016, is a member of the Spectrum Concerts, a major chamber music series at the Philharmonie Berlin. She has won numerous prizes, including the Herbert von Karajan Music Prize, the Johannes Vermeer Award of the Dutch government, five Edison Awards, the German Record Critics’ Award and the Concertgebouw Prize. Since 2019, the violinist has been teaching as a professor of violin at the Haute École de Musique Vaud Valais Fribourg (HÉMU).
