Janice Martin is the only person in the world who does what she does. A Juilliard-trained violinist who studied with the legendary pedagogue Dorothy DeLay, she came to aerial performance by an unlikely route: after developing tendonitis from punishing practice hours as a student, she began exploring voice, dance and the Alexander Technique in search of a healthier way to make music. It was a Cirque du Soleil performance that gave her the idea to combine the two disciplines. Her fear of heights, meanwhile, was dismantled on an Army confidence course — Martin is a United States Army veteran, having enlisted in the military music program at DeLay's suggestion while continuing her Juilliard training on days off. "I wanted to forge my own way in the world by combining my skills," she has said. She now performs suspended twenty feet and more above the stage, on silks and hoop, with the violin under her chin.

As a violinist, pianist and vocalist she has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Prague's Rudolfinum and the White House, and has soloed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony and the Boston Pops, among many others, including through Cirque de la Symphonie. Millions more have seen her on NBC's America's Got Talent and the CW's The Big Stage. She is a recipient of the Stradivari Society, a three-time Female Entertainer of the Year, and the author of a children's inspirational book, How I Learned to Fly. Her own production, the Janice Martin Cirque Show, plays at the Americana Theatre in Branson, Missouri. Of the work itself she is characteristically direct: "My responsibility as an artist really is to do something and show people something that they might not have thought of before."