Guest ArtistsAnne Akiko Meyers, violin

Violin superstar Anne Akiko Meyers, is one of the most in demand violinists in the world. Regularly performing as guest soloist with the world’s top orchestras, she presents ground-breaking recitals and is a best-selling recording artist with 35 albums. Ms. Meyers is known for her passionate performances, purity of sound, deeply poetic interpretations, innovative programming and commitment to commissioning significant new works from living composers.

Anne Akiko Meyers’ recording of Rautavaara’s Fantasia was the only classical instrumental work to be selected on NPR’s 100 best songs of 2017. Fantasia, Anne’s 35th recording, includes works for violin and orchestra by Rautavaara, Ravel and the Szymanowski Concerto No. 1, recorded with Kristjan Järvi and the Philharmonia Orchestra. In 2018, she will premiere a new violin concerto by Adam Schoenberg which she commissioned, debuting the work with the Phoenix and San Diego Symphony Orchestras. Ms. Meyers will also return to Leipzig, Germany to give the European premiere of Rautavaara’s Fantasia with the MDR Leipzig Orchestra and has been invited by the legendary composer, Arvo Pärt to perform at the opening celebration of the new Arvo Pärt Centre in Estonia.

Earlier in 2017 Ms. Meyers performed the world premiere of Fantasia by Einojuhani Rautavaara, a work written for her, and considered to be the composer’s final masterpiece, with the Kansas City Symphony, conducted by Michael Stern. She performed recitals in Florida, New York, Virginia, Washington D.C., and returned to the Nashville Symphony to perform the Bernstein Serenade with Giancarlo Guerrero. In May she headlined the Kanazawa Music Festival, performing the Beethoven Concerto with cadenzas by Mason Bates with the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, toured New Zealand with the Mason Bates Violin Concerto and New Zealand Symphony, and returned to Krakow and Warsaw, Poland, to perform the Szymanowski Concerto and Jakub Ciupinski’s newly orchestrated Wreck of the Umbria. 

Other recent projects include a nationwide PBS broadcast special (later released as Naxos DVD) featuring the world premiere of Samuel Jones’ Violin Concerto with the All-Star Orchestra led by Gerard Schwarz, the French premiere of Mason Bates’ Violin Concerto with Leonard Slatkin and the Orchestre de Lyon, and two new recordings which were included in a box set released on Naïve Classics to celebrate Arvo Pärt’s 80th birthday. Ms. Meyers’ prior release The Four Seasons: The Vivaldi Album, debuted at #1 on the classical Billboard charts, as did Air: The Bach Album; and the Vivaldi was the recording debut of the Ex-Vieuxtemps’ Guarneri del Gesu violin, dated 1741, which was awarded to Ms. Meyers for her lifetime use.

A champion of living composers, Ms. Meyers collaborates closely with many of today’s leading composers. She has expanded the violin repertoire by commissioning and premiering works by composers such as Mason Bates, Jakub Ciupinski, John Corigliano, Jennifer Higdon, Samuel Jones, Wynton Marsalis, Akira Miyoshi, Arvo Pärt, Gene Pritsker, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Somei Satoh, Adam Schoenberg and Joseph Schwantner.

Ms. Meyers has collaborated with a diverse array of artists outside of traditional classical, including jazz icons Chris Botti and Wynton Marsalis, avant-garde musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, electronic music pioneer Isao Tomita, pop-era act Il Divo and singer Michael Bolton. She performed the National Anthem in front of 42,000 fans at Safeco Field in Seattle, appeared twice on The Tonight Show and was featured in a segment on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann that became that show’s third most popular story of the year.

Ms. Meyers has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, CBS’ The Good Wife, NPR’s Morning Edition with Linda Wertheimer and All Things Considered with Robert Siegel. She recently curated “Living American” on Sirius XM Radio’s Symphony Hall with host, David Srebnik. She was on the popular Nick Jr. show, Take Me to Your Mother with Andrea Rosen, and best-selling novelist J. Courtney Sullivan consulted with Ms. Meyers for The Engagements, and basing one of the main characters loosely on Ms. Meyers’ career. She also collaborated with children’s book author and illustrator Kristine Papillon on Crumpet the Trumpet, where the character Violetta the violinist is played by Ms. Meyers.

Anne Akiko Meyers was born in San Diego and grew up in Southern California. She studied with Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld at the Colburn School of Performing Arts, Josef Gingold at Indiana University and Felix Galimir, Masao Kawasaki and Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School. She received the Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Distinguished Alumna Award from the Colburn School of Music and is on the advisory council of the American Youth Symphony Orchestra.