Vanessa-Mae

Vanessa-Mae Vanakorn Nicholson (born 27 October 1978), known professionally as Vanessa-Mae, is a British violinist. Her music style is self-described as "violin techno-acoustic fusion", as several of her albums prominently feature the techno style with the classical style. A former child prodigy, she became a successful crossover violinist with album sales reaching several million, having made her the wealthiest young entertainer in the United Kingdom in 2006. Vanessa-Mae was born in Singapore to Vorapong Vanakorn, an English hotelier of Thai descent, and Pamela Soei Luang Tan, a Chinese lawyer and semi-professional concert pianist. After her parents separated, her mother married Graham Nicholson, a British attorney who adopted Vanessa-Mae, and the family moved to England when Vanessa-Mae was four years old. She grew up in London and holds British citizenship. She began playing piano at the age of three and violin at five. At the age of eight she attended the Francis Holland School in central London, and at eleven, after her concert debut in 1988, she enrolled at the Royal College of Music in London.