Jack Liebeck

Violinist, director and festival director Jack Liebeck possesses 'flawless technical mastery' and a 'beguiling silvery tone' (BBC Music Magazine).

Jack’s playing embraces the worlds of elegant chamber-chic Mozart through to the impassioned mastery required to frame Brett Dean's The Lost Art of Letter Writing. His fascination with all things scientific has led to his most recent collaboration, A Brief History of Time, with Professor Brian Cox and Daniel Harding. This new violin concerto was commissioned for Jack by Melbourne Symphony Orchestra from regular collaborator and composer Paul Dean, and is written in commemoration of Professor Stephen Hawking.

Jack has worked with major international conductors and orchestras including Andrew Litton, Leonard Slatkin, Karl-Heinz Steffens, Sir Mark Elder, Sakari Oramo, Vasily Petrenko, Brett Dean (Royal Stockholm Philharmonic), Daniel Harding (Swedish Radio), Jukka-Pekka Saraste (Oslo Philharmonic), David Robertson (St Louis Symphony), Jakub Hrůša (Melbourne Symphony) and many orchestras across the world including Thailand Philharmonic, Belgian National, Queensland Symphony, Moscow State Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Indianapolis Symphony and all of the UK orchestras.

Recording highlights include the Brahms and Schoenberg violin concertos with BBC Symphony Orchestra, his world premiere recording of Stuart Hancock’s Violin Concerto, and Ysaÿe's six sonatas, all on Orchid Classics. Other collaborations see Jack featured on a chamber disc for Albion Records of songs by Holst and Vaughan Williams with Mary Bevan, and a recording of Braun’s From the Shtetl with London Chamber Orchestra.

Jack is artistic director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music (AFCM), as well as artistic director of his own festivals – Oxford May Music, where the programming is centred around the themes of music, science and the arts, and Alpine Classic in Grindelwald, Switzerland. He can be heard in the soundtracks of The Theory of Everything, Jane Eyre and Anna Karenina. As the Academy's first Émile Sauret Professor of Violin, he works as an ambassador helping to recruit future talent, both at home and internationally.