Jenny Oaks Baker - Awakening (2016)

Violinist Jenny Oaks Baker began her playing career at the young age of four, and has enjoyed increased exposure ever since. She won several competition awards during her youth, earned her Bachelor's degree at Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and her Master's degree from the Juilliard School in New York City. Baker has performed with, among others, the Utah Symphony Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, and Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and was a member of the National Symphony Orchestra.
In 1998, she released her first album, On Wings of Song, and it won two Pearl Awards from the FCMA. Also on the Desert Book label, her second album, Songs My Mother Taught Me, followed a year later. After a move to Shadow Mountain Records, 2000's Where Love Is offered renditions of "The Swan" from Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals and a Beethoven romance among folk and pop material. Her fourth LP, American Tapestry, concentrated on American works from the Civil War through Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story. In 2003, Mormon Tabernacle issued The Light Divine, a mix of classical and religious works with a focus on hymns. It was followed by her first collection, The Best of Jenny Oaks Baker, released by Desert Book. It would hit the Top 20 of the Billboard Classical Albums chart.
Her first Christmas album O Holy Night appeared in 2007 and landed on Billboard's Holiday Albums chart before the arrival of 2008's Silver Screen Serenade, the 2010 religious album Then Sings My Soul, and 2011's Wish Upon a Star: A Tribute to the Music of Walt Disney, all via Shadow Mountain Records. The latter earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Instrumental Album. Another Christmas album, Noel: Carols of Christmas Past came out in the fall of 2012, and Baker took on hits from the '60s through the '90s with Classic: The Rock Album, released in 2014. It became her seventh record to appear on the Billboard classical chart. The following two years brought the religious LPs My Home Can Be a Holy Place and Awakening.