SFCV: Anne Akiko Meyers and LACO’s Tribute to L.A.

The idea of fire fueled a rich, moving, and healing program of new and old music that the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra presented at Colburn Conservatory’s Zipper Hall on April 11, featuring violinist Anne Akiko Meyers and music director Jaime Martin.

Meyers performed Eric Whitacre’s The Pacific Has No Memory, for violin and strings, with which the composer and the soloist commemorate the Pacific Palisades and Altadena fires of January 2025. A Southern California native, Meyers spoke eloquently from the stage of her chaotic post-fire life of moving between hotels “with a family and a crazy dog and my violin.” Her polished, refined, and intonationally pure playing was the highlight of the evening, reports Harlow Robinson for San Francisco Classical Voice.

Inspired by an image of the Pacific as a source of endless renewal from his favorite film, The Shawshank Redemption, Whitacre’s work gives the violin a keening melody that rises and falls like the waves. Gramophone praised the “glowing steadiness” of Meyers’s performance on a recording of the piece she made recently with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which gave the world premiere at Carnegie Hall last spring. The piece appears destined to become a lasting memorial to L.A.’s recovery.

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ soothing and soaring The Lark Ascending came between the two new works in the first half. Here, Meyers’s bowing technique — which she made look so easy — produced a flowing, liquid tone, a seamless stream of sound that along with her pitch-perfect fingering held the audience spellbound.

Read the full review here.