British violinist James Dickenson is known internationally for his work in the field of chamber music. He began playing the violin at 7, and he attended the Junior Academy of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, where he studied with Lydia Mordkovitch and Christopher Rowland. Later, he moved to the United States, where he studied with Daniel Phillips, violinist with the Orion String Quartet. Dickenson played with the Degas Quartet from 2000 to 2008, during which time he also served as concertmaster of the Western Piedmont Symphony in North Carolina from 2003 to 2007. He is a founding member and first violinist of the London-based Villiers Quartet, which was formed in 2010 and later became the quartet-in-residence at the University of Oxford and Nottingham High School. The ensemble has recorded the complete string quartets of Robert Still for Naxos. Dickenson has also recorded the violin duets of Louis Spohr with violinist Jameson Cooper, and the first volume of the series was released in 2018 by Naxos.