Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers has spent a lot of her decades-long profession commissioning new works by modern composers.
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Farah Sosa
Anne Akiko Meyers is on a mission to carry new music to the world. This spring alone, the violinist has launched three albums in as many months that includes new works she commissioned.
Meyers, 55, began enjoying the violin at age 4. She has collaborated with a few of right this moment’s most outstanding composers like Arvo Pärt, Jennifer Higdon, Arturo Márquez and Wynton Marsalis. “I get so moved by their music,” she says. “I am right here to inform the tales of those composers… These giants, these genius minds.”
Meyers is fast to confess she tends to shrink back from extra atonal music. “It simply seems like I’ve to eat a complete plate of dry kale to get by it. It simply would not do something for me,” she says. “I’ve watched [audience] response to a variety of this sort of music, and it simply appears painful. And I believe that is what scares a variety of audiences away, too.” As an alternative, Meyers is drawn to extra expressive and plush textures, which will be heard on all three of her new albums.
Requesting a brand new piece from a composer, Meyers says, requires persistence, “There are undoubtedly some composers who’re identical to, ‘No, no’ and ‘discuss to the hand,’ and it is 5 years, 10 years, and I strive once more and nonetheless they are saying no. And then you definately simply notice, okay, the timing will not be proper. So we’ll simply transfer on.”
Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers performs on the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California in 2023.
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One factor that helps Meyers in all her endeavors is one very particular violin, which she delivered to NPR’s Culver Metropolis, Calif. studios on a current go to. The instrument was made in 1741 by the Italian luthier Giuseppe Guarneri — identified by his nickname del Gesù.
“The ability and the resonance of this instrument is just about unparalleled,” Meyers tells Morning Version host A Martínez. The Vieuxtemps Guarneri del Gesù is taken into account to be one of many finest-sounding violins at the moment in existence and was valued at an estimated $16 million in 2012, when an nameless purchaser bought it then later gifted it to Meyers on a lifetime mortgage.
Meyers remembers the primary time she performed the “Vieuxtemps,” so named after its most well-known proprietor — nineteenth century Belgian virtuoso and composer Henri Vieuxtemps. “The second I put my bow to the string, it was just like the heavens parted,” she says. “The G string is so wealthy, and the E string is so cathedral-like in its resonance.”
Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers stopped by NPR’s studios in Culver Metropolis, California, for an interview with Morning Version‘s A Martínez.
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Melissa Kuypers
The violinist has recorded quite a few albums with the instrument. In April, she launched her forty third, a recording of Michael Daugherty’s Blue Electra. Impressed by the life and mysterious disappearance of aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, the violin concerto additionally honors her legacy as a professor, author and advocate for ladies’s rights.
Meyers says she will get goosebumps when enjoying the piece, channeling “the liberty that Earhart felt when she was within the air.” The work ends with the orchestra mimicking the aircraft’s engine. At one level, it appears like Earhart is falling from the sky, a nod to her 1937 disappearance whereas flying her Lockheed 10-E Electra over the Pacific Ocean.
In Might, Meyers launched recording premieres of works by Eric Whitacre and Ola Gjeilo, in addition to a requiem by jazz pianist Billy Childs. The latter work is predicated on a textual content by Persian poet Rumi and composed in honor of Childs’ mom, Mable Brown Childs, who’s portrayed by the violin within the music. “I play his mom’s voice,” Meyers says, joking: “I advised him to scrub his room quite a bit.”
Billy Childs, left on the piano, wrote his first requiem, Within the Arms of the Beloved, for violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, proper, carried out right here with the Lyris Quartet and the Los Angeles Grasp Chorale.
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Jamie Pham
A brief piece by Philip Glass is the star of Meyers’ newest launch, out Friday. She premiered New Chaconne final yr, after composer and violinist met in New York.
It is an often joyous chaconne, full of Glass’ signature arpeggiated strains that appear to repeatedly advance ahead till the entire thing involves an abrupt cease. A harp, performed by Emmanuel Ceysson, gives the bass line. The work is paired with Glass’ Violin Concerto No. 1, recorded with the Los Angeles Philharmonic led by Gustavo Dudamel.
“When it was despatched to me, I simply could not imagine it,” Meyers says, “That is for the canon of violin literature, and it’ll dwell on without end.”
And thru her relentless commissioning and recording, Meyers helps to push new works into the canon, inspiring future generations.
Philip Glass, heart, composed his New Chaconne for violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, proper, after listening to her carry out his Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic beneath the baton of Karen Kamensek, left.
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The published model of this story was edited and produced by Olivia Hampton, who edited the web model, with manufacturing and modifying help from Tom Huizenga.
