Lara St. John is a violinist from Ontario, Canada and is considered to be one of the pioneers of independent marketing as a recording classical musician. St. John began learning the violin at the age of two, and would give her first performance as a soloist with an orchestra at the age of four. She also became the youngest post-graduate student at the renowned Moscow Conservatory, that would be cut short by the Soviet Union's decline in the early 1990s. In 2000, following the lead of independent musicians in other genres of music, St. John became one of the first young classical musicians to found an artist-owned record company, citing her unhappiness with the lack of creative control she had when working with larger record companies.
