Edmond Fokker van Crayestein, born in the Netherlands, from the well-known Fokker aviation-family, can be considered an autodidact violinist. As a ‘renaissance man’ and polyglot he studied many things and graduated from Leiden University and Harvard Business School but it is the violin that has his heart.
He mostly learnt himself to play the violin with occasional guidance from Jaap van Zweden (great violinist, now conductor of the New York Philharmonic) and Pierre Amoyal (pupil of Heifetz).Edmond has this immense passion and fascination for the violin which made him from an early age listen to especially the old masters like Heifetz, Gitlis, Menuhin, Oistrach, Milstein, Seidel, Nadien, Perlman etc. The great Ossy Renardy who recorded the Paganini capriccio’s, also an autodidact, is another great inspiration to him.
When at university he won first prize in the Inter-academic Chamber music Competition with Mahler’s pianoquartet and was invited to play Vivaldi’s ‘four seasons’ in the great RTL-hall in Luxemburg. He later played in the charitable peace-concert in St Moritz and during the war for the international troops in Afghanistan at Christmas 2015. He was a soloist in the lovely Bruch concerto and other violin warhorses with Holland’s oldest orchestra, Sempre Crescendo in Leiden.
As Edmond can be considered a cosmopolitan; travelling, maintaining a great network and being a people’s person he played at the most unimaginable places. From courts of Royal families to warzones.
His deep-felt love for people is best served by his ability to communicate through music, through his violin. He loves performing with musicians in many different styles, from classical music to far-out improvisations with gipsies and others.
His violin playing and charisma have the ability to touch hearts and unite audiences.