Vanessa-Mae

Vanessa-Mae (Chinese: 陈美; pinyin: Chén Měi; born 27 October 1978), also called Vanessa-Mae Vanakorn Nicholson, is a Singaporean-born British violinist and skier with Thai heritage from her father. Her album sales reached several million by 2006, making her the wealthiest entertainer aged under 30 in the United Kingdom at that time. She is known for fusing classical and popular genres, which she calls "violin techno-acoustic fusion". This crossover style combines her classical violin training with electronic music influences like techno and synth-pop, as seen for example in the title track from her album Storm from 1997.

As a skier, she competed under the name Vanessa Vanakorn (Thai: วาเนสซ่า วรรณกร, romanized: Wa-nes-sa Wan-na-kon; her father's surname) for Thailand in alpine skiing at the 2014 Winter Olympics. She was initially banned from skiing by the International Ski Federation (FIS) after participating in a qualifying race allegedly organised to enable her to qualify for the Winter Olympics. An appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport led to the ban being nullified, citing lack of evidence for her own wrongdoing or any manipulation. The FIS later issued an apology to her.