Meyers

Superstar violinist Anne Akiko Meyers is one of today’s most in-demand classical performers. Beloved by audiences around the world, with a reputation for groundbreaking recital programs and important commissions, Fantasia marks her 35th studio album and is one of her most important projects to date.

The daughter of an artist and a college president, Meyers was born in San Diego, California. Her mother is of Japanese descent. Raised in Southern California, she studied with Shirley Helmick, and then with Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld at the Colburn School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles. She then studied with Josef Gingold at Indiana University and Dorothy DeLay, Felix Galimir, and Masao Kawasaki at the Juilliard School in New York City. Combining her junior and senior high school years and graduating early from the Juilliard School at age 20, she began touring internationally and recording exclusively for RCA Red Seal.

Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers' Koch release Smile continues, to some extent, from her previous Avie issue Birds in Warped Time in that she is attempting to expand beyond the constraints of typical classical CD programming combining a couple of big works, or collecting a bunch of little ones, "encores" into something more imaginative and in more keeping with her own taste and personality. With that, Meyers has invested some measure of muscle into developing repertoire that fits her generous, yet transparent tone with the same degree of comfort as one of her designer-made concert gowns. Here we have an arrangement of the Japanese melody "Kojo No Tsuki," made by Meyers herself in collaboration with Shigeaki Saegusa, for solo violin.