Orpheus & Anne Akiko Meyers Beethoven, Haydn, Eric Whitacre & more!

Anne has been called “the Wonder Woman of commissioning” by The Strad and worked closely with some of the most important composers of the last half century, including Arvo Pärt (Estonian Lullaby), Einojuhani Rautavaara (Fantasia, his final complete work), John Corigliano (cadenzas for the Beethoven Violin Concerto; Lullaby for Natalie), Arturo Márquez (Fandango), Philip Glass (New Chaconne), Michael Daugherty (Blue Electra), Mason Bates and Adam Schoenberg (violin concertos), Jakub Ciupiński, Jennifer Higdon, Samuel Jones, Morten Lauridsen, Wynton Marsalis, Akira Miyoshi, Gene Pritsker, Somei Satoh, and Joseph Schwantner, performing world premieres with the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Nashville, Pittsburgh, San Diego, Seattle, Washington, D.C., Helsinki, Hyogo, Leipzig, London, Lyon, and New Zealand.

Anne’s recording of Fandango, a live performance with Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic, received two Latin GRAMMY® Awards: Best Classical Album and Best Contemporary Composition. Fandango was premiered in 2021 at The Hollywood Bowl, and has already been performed dozens of times around the world.

In the 2024-25 season, Anne performs with the Cincinnati Symphony, Grant Park Music Festival, Sarasota Symphony, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería in Mexico City and Vancouver Symphony. She will premiere Murmur, by Eric Whitacre, with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.

Highlights from Anne’s 2023-24 season included performances of the Philip Glass Violin Concerto No.1 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl and the Prague Philharmonia; the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on its U.S. tour; the world premiere of Billy Childs’s requiem In The Arms of the Beloved, with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, a popular appearance on NPR’s Tiny Desk series, and Artistic Director at the Laguna Beach Music Festival, where she performed several world premieres including New Chaconne, a new work Philip Glass composed for her.

Recent highlights included appearances with the L.A. Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel in Los Angeles, and on tour marking the L.A. Phil’s return to Carnegie Hall in over 32 years and at the Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City. In 2022, Anne premiered Blue Electra, a new violin concerto by Michael Daugherty, which received massive critical acclaim at The Kennedy Center with Gianandrea Noseda and the National Symphony Orchestra.

The violinist’s first national television appearances were on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, at age 11, followed by performances that include Evening At Pops with John Williams, CBS Sunday Morning, Great Performances, Countdown with Keith Olbermann (in a segment that was the third most popular story of that year), The Emmy Awards, and The View. John Williams chose Anne to perform the theme from Schindler’s List for a Great Performances PBS telecast, and Arvo Pärt invited her to be his guest soloist at the opening ceremony concerts of his new center and concert hall in Estonia.

Krzysztof Penderecki selected Anne to perform the Beethoven Violin Concerto at the 40th Pablo Casals Festival with the Montreal Symphony, which was broadcast on A&E. Her recording of Somei Satoh’s Birds in Warped Time II was used by architect Michael Arad for his award-winning design submission, which today has become The World Trade Center Memorial in lower Manhattan.

Other career highlights include a performance of the Barber Violin Concerto at the Australian Bicentennial Concert for an audience of 750,000 in Sydney Harbour; performances for the Emperor and Empress Akihito of Japan; for Queen Máxima

of the Netherlands, in a Museumplein Concert with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; and “The Star-Spangled Banner” at T-Mobile Park in Seattle and Dodger Stadium. She was profiled on NPR’s Morning Edition with Linda Wertheimer and All Things Considered with Robert Siegel, and she curated “Living American” on Sirius XM Radio’s Symphony Hall.

Anne has been featured in commercials and advertising campaigns including Anne Klein, shot by legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz; Northwest Airlines; DDI Japan; and TDK; and was the inspiration for the main character’s career path in the novel The Engagements, by the popular author J. Courtney Sullivan. She collaborated with children’s book author and illustrator Kristine Papillon on Crumpet the Trumpet, appearing as the character Violetta the violinist, and featured in a documentary about legendary radio personality Jim Svejda. Anne has collaborated with a diverse array of artists 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.

Anne was born in San Diego and grew up in Southern California, where she and her mother traveled eight hours, round trip, from the Mojave Desert to Pasadena for lessons with Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld at the predecessor of the Colburn School of Performing Arts. Anne moved to New York at the age of 14 to study at The Juilliard School with the legendary violin instructor Dorothy DeLay, and with Masao Kawasaki and Felix Galimir; she signed with management at 16; and recorded her debut album of the Barber and Bruch Violin Concertos with the RPO at Abbey Road Studios at 18.

She has received the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Distinguished Alumna Award, and an Honorary Doctorate from The Colburn School. She serves on the Board of Trustees of The Juilliard School and was recently honored by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. In October 2024, Anne was inducted into the Asian Hall of Fame, honoring leading members of the Asian community across a wide array of disciplines.

Anne performs on Larsen Strings with the Ex-Vieuxtemps Guarneri del Gesù, dated 1741, considered by many to be the finest-sounding violin in existence.

Eric served consecutive terms as Artist in Residence with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and currently holds the position of Visiting Composer at Pembroke College. He’s also an Ambassador for the Royal College of Music in London and is proud to be a Yamaha artist. A long-term relationship with Decca Classics has produced several no.1 albums which have enduring success. Recorded with vocal supergroup VOCES8 and released in 2023, Home features Eric’s work The Sacred Veil alongside other works spanning his thirty-year composition career.

Eric’s newest composition, Eternity in an Hour, premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in London as part of the BBC Proms in September 2024. Written for choir, string quartet, piano and electronics, it’s the first time Eric has simultaneously conducted and played live electronics on-stage. The piece combines acoustic performance with live synths and real-time sampling and manipulation of the acoustic instruments. In 2025, Murmur, commissioned by revered violinist, Anne Akiko Meyers, will receive its premiere performed by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, followed by Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Insatiably curious and a lover of all types of music, Eric has worked with legendary Hollywood composer Hans Zimmer, as well as British pop icons Laura Mvula, Imogen Heap and Annie Lennox.

A widely respected conductor, Eric has worked with the world’s leading choirs and orchestras including the Minnesota Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2024, he conducted Mozart Requiem alongside his own pieces with The Louisville Orchestra. His collaboration with Spitfire Audio resulted in a trail-blazing vocal sample library which became an instant best-seller and is used by composers the world-over. Major classical commissions have been written for the BBC Proms, Minnesota Orchestra, Rundfunkchor Berlin, The Tallis Scholars, VOCES8, cellist Julian Lloyd-Webber and the Philharmonia Orchestra, Chanticleer, National Symphony Orchestra/Kennedy Center, Kantorei, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, National Children’s Chorus of America and The King’s Singers.

His composition, Deep Field, was inspired by the achievements of the Hubble Space Telescope and became the foundation for a pioneering collaboration with NASA, the Space Telescope Science Institute, and film-makers 59 Productions. The film was premiered at Kennedy Space Center (Cape Canaveral, Florida), has been seen in concert halls and at arts and science festivals across the world. His long-form work The Sacred Veil, a profound meditation on love, life and loss, was premiered by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, conducted by the composer. A new version with full string orchestra was commissioned and premiered by Kantorei in Fall 2022.

Widely considered to be the pioneer of Virtual Choirs, Eric created his first project as an experiment in social media and digital technology. Virtual Choir 1: Lux Aurumque was published in 2010 and featured 185 singers from 12 countries. Ten years-on in 2020, Virtual Choir 6: Sing Gently – written for the Virtual Choir during the global pandemic that shook the world, COVID-19 – featured 17,562 singers from 129 countries. Previous Virtual Choir projects include ‘Glow’ written for the Winter Dreams holiday show at Disneyland© Adventure Park, California, and the Virtual Youth Choir, a major fundraiser for UNICEF. To date, the Virtual Choirs have registered over 60 million views and have been seen on global TV. In 2021, Eric launched the Virtual School with its first course “The Beautiful Mess: Masterclass in Composition and Creativity”.

A charismatic speaker, Eric Whitacre has given keynote addresses for many Fortune 500 companies, in education and global institutions from Apple and Google to the World Economic Forum in Davos and the United Nations Speaker’s Program. His mainstage talks at the influential TED conference in Long Beach CA received standing ovations.