Rachel Barton Pine is a violinist from the United Kingdom, associated with classical music but with interests that also extend to Baroque, folk, Celtic, rock and jazz. She starts playing the violin at the age of three and a half and is regarded as a child prodigy. She is based in Chicago, where she lives with her husband Greg, a computer entrepreneur and former minor league baseball pitcher.

Career

She performs regularly with the Chicago Symphony and as a soloist, and tours internationally with an active recording career. Through her child and teenage years she appears at many major venues. Her solo performances include appearances with orchestras under conductors such as Charles Dutoit, Zubin Mehta, Neeme Järvi, Marin Alsop, Semyon Bychkov, Plácido Domingo and José Serebrier. She also performs with Daniel Barenboim, Christoph Eschenbach and William Warfield.

Festival appearances and chamber music

Her festival appearances include Marlboro, Ravinia, Montreal, Salzburg and Salzburg’s Mozartwoche, where she appears at the invitation of Franz Welser-Möst. In chamber music she performs as part of Trio Settecento with David Schrader and John Mark Rozendaal.

Instruments and repertoire

Her principal instrument is the 1742 “ex-Soldat” violin by Guarneri del Gesu. For music from the 17th and 18th centuries she prefers an unaltered 1770 Nicolò Gagliano I instrument.

Other work

She teaches regularly at Mark O'Connor’s annual summer fiddle camp and often performs at schools and on rock music radio stations to help interest younger audiences in classical music. Her rock tastes include heavy metal, and she names AC/DC, Anthrax, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Megadeth, Metallica, Motörhead, Pantera, Slayer and Van Halen among her favourites. She has met and jammed with several of these bands. She releases a heavy-metal-inspired album in 1997 and records a collaboration with Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser in 2004. In 2009 she joins the doom metal band Earthen Grave and plays a 7-string Viper electric violin with the group.

Bill McGlaughlin describes her as a “musical Pac-Man” because of her ability to absorb and perform many different kinds of music.