Merissa Meyer

The breadth of clarinetist Sabine Meyer's repertoire is matched by her dedication to collaborations with other, equally skilled musicians. She received her first music lessons from her father, clarinetist Karl Meyer, and then went on to study with Otto Hermann in Stuttgart and Hans Deinzer in Hannover. She was 16 when she made her professional debut. She joined Munich's Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra for a time, then in 1982, Herbert von Karajan created something of an international stir by appointing her as solo clarinetist for the Berlin Philharmonic, going against the orchestra's tradition of not admitting female musicians.

Klaus Gesing, Bjorn Meyer, Samuel Rohrer: Amiira The trio of Swiss drummer & percussionist Samuel Rohrer, Swedish bass guitarist Björn Meyer and German reedsman Klaus Gesing first came together in 2013 when they released their only previous recording, open_source_music. Before they joined forces, each of the three had had years of experience on the road playing various styles of music. On coming together, their stated intention was to dissolve the borders between improvisation and composition, with the music on that debut recording demonstrating that they lived up to that intention.

This is an important recording for all sorts of reasons: Stamitz founded the Mannheim Orchestra which was the ancestor of all modern orchestras. The music is very beautiful and has lasted for 250 years, so you won't ever grow tired of it. This recording is probably closer to what he had in mind than he ever heard, as contemporary musicianship was supposed to be somewhat ropey: some contemporary musicians even regarded the invention of the metronome as a gross intrusion into the musician's freedom to speed up or slow down as he pleased.

Like Friedrich Gulda and Martha Argerich, the Swiss pianist Brigitte Meyer comes from the Viennese talent factory of the great teacher Bruno Seidlhofer. Her long international career has taken her to the world's foremost stages and together with outstanding musicians. Now she is releasing a CD with works by Joseph Haydn with GENUIN in the Artist Consort series. In a period of more than thirty years, Haydn wrote over sixty piano sonatas: from the beginning of his service at the court of Esterházy to the years of his fame in Europe. Brigitte Meyer plays four of these esprit-packed works with great delicacy and elastic drive.

The Melody of Rhythm, is an unparalleled collaboration between banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck, composer and double-bass master Edgar Meyer and Zakir Hussain, arguably the world’s greatest tabla player.

The Goat Rodeo Sessions is an ambitious and groundbreaking project that brings together four string virtuosos: world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, fiddler Stuart Duncan, bassist Edgar Meyer and mandolinist Chris Thile. While each artist is a prominent figure in his own music sphere, they have come together as a unified ensemble on a most remarkable and organic cross-genre project. The music, including two tracks with female vocalist Aoife O'Donovan, feels both new and familiar it's composed and improvised, uptown and down home, funky and pastoral and above all, uniquely American.