Anne Akiko Meyers is on a Roll: With 3 New Albums and 3 High-profile Features, the Violinist Continues to Celebrate Contemporary Music
“Working with living composers deeply inspires me and I am so grateful to them for creating new sound worlds and repertoire for the violin literature. Audiences really connect to music written by living composers and appreciate authentic storytelling in the works I have commissioned and premiered.” — Anne Akiko Meyers
Meyers on the cover of the July 2025 issue of Gramophone.
Violinist extraordinaire Anne Akiko Meyers released three new albums this spring, including an album devoted to Philip Glass, with the iconic composer’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and the world premiere recoding of his New Chaconne, composed for Meyers. She gave the world premiere in 2024 at the Laguna Beach Music Festival in southern California, where she was serving as artistic director. She was joined by Emmanuel Ceysson, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s principal harp, who also performs with Meyers on the new recording. “When it was sent to me, I just couldn't believe it," Meyers told NPR this month. “This is for the canon of violin literature, and it will live on forever.”
In May, Beloved was released (both albums on the Platoon label); it is a collection of choral and orchestral works centered on In the Arms of the Beloved, a requiem by the jazz pianist and composer Billy Childs written in memory of his mother. Meyers recorded it with the Los Angeles Master Chorale under Grant Gershon. The album also features music by Eric Whitacre and Ola Gjeilo, expanding Meyers’s ongoing exploration of repertoire that bridges spiritual reflection and expressive clarity.
Finally, Blue Electra appeared in April on Naxos, with the world premiere recording of Michael Daugherty’s violin concerto of that name, inspired by the life of aviator Amelia Earhart. Another Meyers commission.
“Meyers remains unflaggingly committed to commissioning and learning new works for her instrument – a dedication reflected not only in her extensive discography, but also in the vitality she brings to her concerts, ensuring that the pieces she commissions continue to be heard well beyond their premieres,” writes Tom May for the cover story of the July 2025 issue of Gramophone.
Meyers stopped by NPR's studios in Culver City, Calif., for an interview with Morning Edition's A Martínez (credit: Melissa Kuypers)
And there’s more to come. The violinist plans to release a fourth new album later this year or early next: a recording of Orchard in Fog, a 2017 concerto for violin that she commissioned from the American composer Adam Schoenberg and premiered in 2018 with the San Diego Symphony and conductor Sameer Patel. The piece is a musical response to a photograph by Adam Laipson of an apple orchard in winter, explains May in his feature-length piece.
“Anne is really the only superstar soloist I know who believes in expanding the repertoire and consistently does that,” Schoenberg told May. “Besides touring the world and releasing so many albums, I think that’s going to be the greatest part of her legacy.”
“There’s always an element of risk in creative work, and I think that’s part of what keeps it exciting and meaningful,” Meyers told The Strad. “For me, the trust involved in these collaborations is deeply personal and essential.”
In Meyers’s own words: “Working with living composers deeply inspires me and I am so grateful to them for creating new sound worlds and repertoire for the violin literature,” she told The Strad. “Audiences really connect to music written by living composers and appreciate authentic storytelling in the works I have commissioned and premiered.”