After Dinner Speakers: Vanessa Mae, Meera Syal, Rose Royce

Dubbed a "Mozart in Doc Martens" by People magazine, violin prodigy Vanessa-Mae is pushing the envelope of classical music. Vanessa-Mae Nicholson was born in Singapore in 1978 and raised in London by her Chinese father and Thai mother. She began playing piano at age three and violin at age five; by the time she was 13, Vanessa-Mae had toured internationally as a violin soloist and recorded both the Tchaikovsky and Beethoven Violin Concertos, the youngest to ever do so. In 1994 Vanessa-Mae was offered a deal with EMI that would allow her to record for both their classical and pop imprints. Her pop debut, The Violin Player, was released in 1995 and eventually went quadruple platinum on the strength of her techno-synth interpretation of Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor," whose video featured Vanessa-Mae dancing in a wet T-shirt. In 1996, the 17-year-old Vanessa-Mae made People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" list and recorded her first classical album, befittingly titled Classical Album I. This was followed up with 1997's China Girl - Classical Album II. Her latest pop album, Storm, was released on Virgin Records in the summer of 1998 and contains a remake of the 1977 Donna Summer hit "I Feel Love."