New Zealand Herald: Brief encounter - violinist Anne Akiko Meyers

Photo: Molina Visuals

You describe yourself as a modern classical musician - why is this an important definition for you?

I think it is important for performers to embrace technology to connect with today's audience. In addition to traditional concerto, recitals, chamber music and recordings, I reach a wider fan base by collaborating with a diverse group of musicians (including Wynton Marsalis, Il Divo, Michael Bolton, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Isao Tomita), embracing technology and social media. I also love supporting and commissioning composers to expand the violin literature. All these diverse musical ideas make me a much better musician.

Mason Bates Violin Concerto was composed for you - how does it feel to have a concerto composed especially for you?

Working closely with living composers always gives me a greater understanding of music from prior periods and makes me ask questions. Was it a muse or situation that inspired the composer to create a work that lives on for generations? I don't really think of the concerto as written for me, it's more a piece for the world. Over time, any great music needs to attract lots of performers who add the piece to their repertoire.

It's about a pre-historic dinosaur taking flight - were you a big dinosaur fan as a kid as so many young ones are?

There are many descriptive sound effects in the concerto; one where I am supposed to be the actual dinosaur trudging through swampy lakebeds with a sensual quality - that takes an active imagination! My children and their cousins love dinosaurs - it makes you always aware that humankind came from a very prehistoric place. Mason Bates, the composer, also has young children, and I think they are huge dinosaur fans.

If you could travel back in time to any concert, meet any composer - who would it be and why?

I think this would have to be Beethoven conducting his Symphony No.9. It's impossible to imagine that he composed that stone cold deaf.

What's the greatest threat to the future of classical music?

I think classical music has a wider audience than ever before due to technology. I am shocked to see videos I have put on YouTube have been played millions of times. My family and I "attend" performances of the Berlin Philharmonic and Detroit Symphony Orchestra streamed into your home. This is amazing and incredible and will build the audience in younger generations. I wish I had that kind of access to recordings when I was in my 20s!

What makes you want to work with the NZ Symphony Orchestra?

I am super excited to see and experience New Zealand for the first time. My dad actually motorcycled around the country and sent photos of places I thought only existed in heaven. It will also be the first time I work with Fawzi Haimor [conductor] and the orchestra and it will be so much fun to bring Mason Bates' violin concerto to life together.

Why is this work important - and why should people want to come and see/hear it?

Mason Bates is a dynamic and extremely popular young American composer who is composer-in-residence with the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center and was also composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony. A leading composer of his generation, his music is inventive, colourful and highly expressive, not to mention incredibly challenging. Audiences always clamour for more and I am thrilled to bring his first violin concerto to New Zealand!

• Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers joins the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra for its Bold Worlds concert at the Great Hall, Auckland Town Hall on Friday, October 7.

Violinist: Anne Akiko Meyers releases 'Fantasia,' a last violin work by Einojuhani Rautavaara

Violinist
By Laurie Niles

Anne Akiko Meyers and Einojuhani Rautavaara

Back in the 1990s Anne Akiko Meyers discovered a recording that stopped her in her tracks: Cantus Arcticus, by the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara.

"I was always flipping through CDs and sheet music at stores, trying to discover new works that were under the radar," Meyers told me last week over the phone. "That's how I came across the 'Concerto for Birds and Orchestra.' I was blown away by the sheer beauty of the music, and the way Rautavaara incorporated nature into a symphony. He actually went into a preserve and recorded birds chirping and singing, and that became an organic part of music. I listened to the recording many, many times on repeat."

The more she explored Rautavaara's works, the more she loved the music.

"I'm a lifelong fan," she said. "I've always been very enamored with these mystical, mythical composers like Arvo Pärt and Rautavaara."

In fact, last year she worked with Arvo Pärt to record his Passacaglia -- it made her think once again about Rautavaara. Might he like to compose a piece for her?

"It was always a dream of mine," she said. "I wondered, what is he up to, these days? I sent an e-mail to (his publisher) Boosey and Hawkes. You can risk getting a 'No' from a composer; it's always worth asking. I've commissioned many composers recently, and found that timing is crucial." The list of composers that Meyers has worked with and commissioned works from is long, and includes Mason Bates, Jakub Ciupinski, John Corigliano, Jennifer Higdon, Samuel Jones, Wynton Marsalis Somei Satoh, and Joseph Schwantner.

"I've become more tenacious about it," she said. Her tenacity paid off: "Immediately I got the response: 'He would love to write something for you. How long of a piece would you like?'"

Rautavaara had already written a violin concerto, "so I thought, what would pique his curiosity and be stylistically up his alley? That's when I came up with the idea of a 15-minute fantasy," Meyers said. "He sent me the music at the end of the summer, handwritten on manuscript paper. I was just smitten. Immediately I could sense overtones of Cantus Arcticus, and also his Symphony No. 7, the Angel of Light."

That was in 2015. If she'd waited any longer, their collaboration may never have happened; Rautavaara died in July 2016, at the age of 87. The work Meyers commissioned, called "Fantasia," was among the last pieces he wrote. She recorded it in May with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Kristjan Järvi. Due to his recent death, she has made it available as a single on Amazon. It will be the title track on her upcoming album Fantasia: The Fantasy Album, to be released in spring 2017.

Though Rautavaara did not live to hear the work in concert, he heard Meyers play it in person. After sending her the work, "he invited me to come to Helsinki," Meyers said. "I was so excited to go. I flew out in December 2015 and played the piece for him.

The second I finished, he turned to me, smiled so brightly and said, 'Wow, did I write some beautiful, beautiful music!' (She laughs) I thought that was the sweetest thing ever! Because it really is so deeply spiritual, poetic and beautiful."

"We played it again, and I expected him to say, 'Oh, this note, I'm not so sure...' I was also nervous about the bowings that I had changed, because his bowings were very specifically marked," she said. "The bowings really change the direction and meaning of the phrases."

Rautavaara liked it, though. "He said immediately, 'I love what you did, I don't have much confidence in myself with markings, especially bowings. I think you really brought out the phrasing to make it sing as much as possible, so let's use all your bowings.' That was that! No dynamic changes, no note changes, nothing," Meyers said. He knew what he wanted.

Though his health may have been in decline, Rautavaara was at the height of his composing powers, she said. "There's just so much experience and a rich, vast wisdom that he had, right in his fingertips. I think it's one of the most beautiful pieces ever composed."

Gramophone: Anne Akiko Meyers presents an exclusive first listen to Rautavaara's Fantasia

Gramophone

Last December I travelled to Finland to play Fantasia for Violin and Orchestra, written by the great composer, Einojuhani Rautavaara, which I will be premiering with Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony this upcoming season. Sadly with Rautavaara’s recent death, this will be a posthumous world premiere. 

Rautavaara was a legendary Finnish composer who wrote eight symphonies, 14 concertos, and numerous other works for chamber ensembles and choir. He was a protégé of Sibelius, active until age 87, and was best known for writing Symphony No 7, Angel of Lightand the beautifully haunting work, Cantus Arcticus: concerto for birds and orchestra, a piece that took my breath away the first time I heard it.

In my early twenties, I regularly went to record and sheet-music stores, looking through items one at a time in the hope of discovering music that would make the hairs on my neck stand up. It was then I first discovered Rautavaara’s music, and for years, dreamed of commissioning him to compose more music for violin. In 2014, I inquired if Rautavaara, with the wonderful support of Boosey & Hawkes, would be interested in writing a fantasy for violin and orchestra. I was beyond elated when he responded that indeed he would and worked quickly. I received a handwritten draft of the score in the fall of last year, and breathlessly ran to my music studio to play through it. 

I think there are similar qualities to the Angel of Light and Cantus Arcticus and Rautavaara’s signature soulful sound permeates throughout the piece, with fluid harmonies and deep moods  -much like flowing large movements of water and majestic scenes from nature. 

In December, I flew to Helsinki to meet Rautavaara and perform the work for him. We met at the apartment he shared with his wife, and the apartment was flooded with a special light that only seems to exist at the edge of the earth, overlooking the sea. He stood with a walker and was incredibly  gentle and kind. Smiling and laughing, we spoke about how Sibelius liked the fact that Rautavaara owned an automobile, as well as his time in New York, studying at the Juilliard School where I also went to school. 

After I played Fantasia, he looked at me and repeatedly said, 'I wrote such beautiful music!' We all laughed and agreed. He apologized for what he felt were his lazy bow markings and was so happy that I took the liberty to change the bowings to punctuate the phrasing the way I thought would bring his poetry out best. I was amazed that he made no changes to any notes or dynamics. Everything was in place just the way he wrote it. 

Fantasia is transcendent and has the feeling of an elegy with a very personal reflective mood. Rautavaara’s music will live on forever and I thank him from the bottom of my heart for writing a masterpiece that makes me cry every time I listen to it.

Listen to an exclusive preview of Anne Akiko Meyers performing Rautavaara's Fantasia for Violin and Orchestra with the Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Kristjan Järvi below:

BBC Radio 3 In Tune: Anne Akiko Meyers Performs Live

Listen here to Anne Akiko Meyers who performed Arvo Pärt's "Spiegel im Spiegel' and Bach's "Air" from Orchestral Suite No.3 in D major on BBC Radio 3 In Tune and talked with Suzy Klein about her new recording, broken foot, and Vieuxtemps Guarneri. Her segment begins at 42:22.

Washington Post: Anne Akiko Meyers: Violinist breaks a leg — or rather, a foot.

The Washington Post
By Anne Midgette

“Break a leg” and “the show must go on” are among the most overused injunctions in the performing arts. On Friday, Anne Akiko Meyers joined the lists of performers who have obeyed both.

To be exact, she didn’t break a leg. She broke her foot. But it didn’t stop her from performing Mason Bates’s challenging violin concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra on Friday and Saturday nights (after Thursday night’s unhampered performance).

“I thought I just completely sprained my foot,” the violinist said by phone from her home in Austin, Texas on Monday afternoon. “It was black and blue. But I didn’t know it was broken. I have never broken anything in my body.”

On Friday night, all that was evident was a slight limp – and slightly unconventional footwear, sturdy platform sandals. (“They’re like wearing sneakers,” Meyers said.) Sitting in the audience, I might not have noticed either had I not been tipped, off the record, before the concert, that Meyers had had a bad fall in the afternoon. That explained the placement of a stool on stage; but in the event, Meyers walked out, did not use the stool, and played the difficult concerto with aplomb.

By Saturday morning, the foot had ballooned. For Saturday night’s performance, Meyers used a wheelchair to get on stage – but still played standing up.

“You cannot sit and play Mason’s music,” she said on Monday. “It doesn’t work.” Besides, she added, “If I had sat, I would never have gotten up.”

The accident itself was relatively benign, or perhaps “domestic” is a better term: Meyers was pushing a stroller with her two daughters, ages four and five, while checking her e-mail on a smartphone, and didn’t see the curb at the edge of the sidewalk.

“It happened at like two o’clock,” she said. “I had a soundcheck at four.” There wasn’t time to go to the doctor, and besides, she was pretty sure what a doctor would say: “You need to ice it, and elevate, and medicate: three things I couldn’t do at that moment.”

It wasn’t until she got home to Austin on Sunday that she went to the emergency room and discovered that she had played with a broken foot.

Her misadventure is reminiscent of the time in 2009 that the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato fell on stage and broke her leg during a performance of “The Barber of Seville” at Covent Garden. DiDonato finished the performance, on crutches, and then went to the hospital. She sang the next performance in a wheelchair.

But opera staging involves so much physical activity that people are apt to get hurt once in a while. (I remember a night when the stage knife failed to retract when Don Jose stabbed Carmen, drawing blood from the mezzo-soprano Elena Zaremba. Fortunately he only hit her arm.) Generally speaking, the concert stage tends to be a less perilous place.

Meyers is not cancelling any performances. Next on her schedule is a recording in London of a new piece by the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara, Szymanowski’s violin concerto, and Mortin Lauridsen’s arrangement of his popular “O Magnum Mysterium.” At least no one will see her footwear for that.

Seattle Times: ‘All-Star Orchestra’ premieres classical music on TV

Composer Samuel Jones and violin soloist Anne Akiko Meyers after the TV filming of his new concerto for “All-Star Orchestra.”

The Seattle Times
By Tom Keogh

What do Gian Carlo Menotti’s 1951 one-act opera “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” Igor Stravinsky’s 1962 “The Flood: A Musical Play” and Samuel Jones’ 2014 “Concerto for Violin and Orchestra” have in common?

They are some of the only works of classical music whose world premieres were television productions, sans concert hall or live audience.

Those three are part of an exclusive club, with Tacoma resident Jones’ piece making history in its debut on public television’s Emmy-winning series “The All-Star Orchestra.”

Some have already seen Jones’ “All-Star” episode pairing “Concerto” with Mozart’s magnificent “Posthorn Serenade,” which was recorded at SUNY Purchase College in New York and is being broadcast over 80 PBS stations this winter. Seattle’s PBS station KCTS-9 has quietly tucked the program’s local debut (at 4 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 17) into the end of a four-hour marathon of the current “All-Star Orchestra” season.

That’s a somewhat indifferent presentation that doesn’t befit the broadcast’s regional significance or extensive roots in Seattle Symphony Orchestra history.

Jones, a founder and longtime dean of the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, has a long and fruitful association with SSO. Beginning in 1997, he spent 14 years as the organization’s composer-in-residence (with a total of 13 premieres), 16 years as director of the annual Merriman Family Young Composers Workshop and two terms on the board of directors.

It’s no wonder Gerard Schwarz, while nearing the end of his own 26-year tenure as SSO music director, conducted a “Samuel Jones Celebration” in June 2011. The following night, Schwarz led the ensemble in the world premiere of Jones’ “Reflections: Songs of Fathers and Daughters,” commissioned by a group of donors led by Seattle real-estate businessman Charlie Staadecker.

These key relationships — between Jones, Schwarz and Staadecker — carried over to the “All-Star” presentation of “Concerto for Violin and Orchestra.”

Staadecker (who with his wife, Benita, had also commissioned Jones’ 2009 “Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra”) put together another consortium of donors to back the new work.

Meanwhile, Schwarz wanted his longtime collaborator to join him in working without a net. He offered a televised world premiere of the violin piece as an exciting — if nerve-wracking — special event, without the security of collective rehearsals, performed by the ready-for-anything All-Star Orchestra and renowned violin soloist Anne Akiko Meyers.

Schwarz’s post-Seattle passion project, “The All-Star Orchestra” debuted in 2014, bringing together 95 top orchestral musicians from across the country to perform no-audience, in-studio concerts, shot with 18 high-definition, roaming cameras. The series satisfies Schwarz’s lifelong desire to bring classical music to a broader audience.

Meyers learned the piece’s expressive and complex three movements over several weeks. The All-Star players prepared individually as well.

“On the day of taping,” Jones said, “the orchestra was right there. You would never believe this was being played for the first time.”

“It was a thrilling experience to have that kind of wonderful pressure,” said Schwarz.

“The concerto is about the life path of an artist,” Jones explained, “and runs parallel to Saint Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, the line about faith, hope and love — the greatest of the three being love. I changed the order to hope, faith and love. The artist desires to do great things, grows a belief in the help of teachers, and in the third movement, love symbolizes the freedom and joy that comes from being an artist.”