Remembering A Fire’s Devastation, Violinist Offers Balm Of Music
By Paul Bodine - January 9, 2026. (Photos by Elizabeth Asher)
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — Like a haunting reversion-to-nature scene, the quiet seaside community of Pacific Palisades appeared surprisingly green and lush Jan. 7 after winter rains. It was eerily quiet, the rare ostinato of construction hammers and whir of power screwdrivers overwhelmed by the vastness of empty lots, like silent gravesites. Exactly one year after a catastrophic fire that claimed 12 lives and destroyed 6,833 homes (the largest fire ever in Los Angeles in terms of structures lost), Pacific Palisades courageously mounted a one-year commemoration concert at the community’s Saint Matthew’s Episcopal Church, whose original building was destroyed by wildfire in 1978.
As Thomas Neenan, a member of St. Matthew’s Music Guild Board of Directors, bluntly confirmed, the concert was largely the work of one person — violinist and local resident Anne Akiko Meyers. “Anne has been the driving force behind everything that’s happened today,” he said.
The arson-caused firestorm that destroyed the neighborhood on Jan. 7, 2025, had direct effects on Los Angeles’ musical community. Not only did countless musicians lose homes and instruments, some historically significant, but it also took down local landmarks like Belmont Music Publishers, founded by Arnold Schoenberg’s son, home to thousands of now destroyed Schoenberg scores and parts. Meyers’ home, though damaged, was largely spared.
The violinist’s identification with Pacific Palisades, where she’s lived since 2016, runs deep. She was raised in Los Angeles, where one of her daughters attended the St. Matthews Parish School. Proceeds from the January 7 concert supported four arts organizations, and Meyers serves on the Board of Trustees of The Juilliard School and The Dudamel Foundation.
The Pacific Has No Memory
Everything changed on January 7, 2025
I never imagined we would evacuate our home in the Palisades—a place alive with laughter, music, and the joyful chaos of my husband, our two young daughters, and crazy rescue dog—never to return.
So many dear friends lost everything: cherished family heirlooms, photographs, instruments, and music libraries that had taken a lifetime to build—all vanished in moments. That evening, from our hotel window, I watched the fires rage through the beautiful Santa Monica Mountains and sobbed, completely helpless.
Yet from the ash and destruction, something profoundly beautiful emerged—much like the glowing fairy at the end of Fantasia, rising from Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite.
I commissioned Eric Whitacre to write a new work for violin and orchestra, and as the world changed, so did his composition. Little did I know that The Pacific Has No Memory would be born from these epic tragedies. This music has become salve for the soul—a warm, healing embrace for my broken heart. Tender and profound, it radiates love, hope, and renewal.
I am eternally grateful to Eric Whitacre for creating this musical prayer and to the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for breathing life into it together. This recording is dedicated to all who were affected by the Los Angeles fires, and to the brave first responders who risked everything to save lives.
- Anne Akiko Meyers
Anne Akiko Meyers Featured in Cover Story for Strings Magazine
Megan Westberg from Strings Magazine speaks with Anne Akiko Meyers on her prolific output of recordings and her passion for new music and contemporary storytelling.
GRAMMY® Award-winning violinist Anne Akiko Meyers speaks with Megan Westberg from Strings Magazine for the cover story for the November-December 2025 issue. Westberg hails Meyers as a “stalwart champion of contemporary composers,” highlighting the recent release of three albums of contemporary music, with two more on the way.
Within the past year, Meyers’ recording output features Michael Daugherty: Blue Electra for violin and orchestra, Beloved (In the Arms of the Beloved) by Billy Childs, and Philip Glass Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel. Upcoming projects for Meyers include commissioned recordings of Adam Schoenberg’s violin concerto Orchard in Fog and Eric Whitacre’s The Pacific Has No Memory with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which premiered to a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall in May 2025.
Meyers comments on the necessity of new music in the modern landscape of recording and performance: “You want music that grows…it’s a reflection of our times, our culture, and it just resonates, I think, so deeply in our hearts when we listen to music that makes us feel.”
Read the full piece here.
(Credit Jamie Pham)
Anne Akiko Meyers is on a Roll: With 3 New Albums and 3 High-profile Features, the Violinist Continues to Celebrate Contemporary Music
Anne Akiko Meyers is on the cover of the July 2025 issue of Gramophone, and she's featured on NPR and on The Strad in June.
“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.”
San Francisco Classical Voice: Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers Takes Music Into Her Own Hands
Already a seasoned performer at age 11, when she made her debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, now 53, is still riding high. A champion of contemporary composers, she has also collaborated with today’s most celebrated conductors, orchestras, and presenters.
Next weekend, Feb. 16–18, Meyers takes the reins of the Laguna Beach Music Festival as this year’s artistic director, performing in three programs, the first of which features works by Arvo Pärt and Heitor Villa-Lobos, as well as a world premiere by Philip Glass. Hailed as “the Wonder Woman of commissioning” by The Strad magazine, the violinist was recently nominated for a Grammy Award for her live recording with Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Phil of Arturo Márquez’s concerto Fandango, written for her in 2021.
Born in San Diego, Meyers began violin lessons with Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld at the Community School of Performing Arts (now the Colburn School) before moving to New York at age 14 to study at The Juilliard School with the legendary teacher Dorothy DeLay. Just four years later, Meyers recorded her debut album, which featured concertos by Samuel Barber and Max Bruch, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) at Abbey Road Studios.
San Francisco Classical Voice
By Victoria Looseleaf
Already a seasoned performer at age 11, when she made her debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, now 53, is still riding high. A champion of contemporary composers, she has also collaborated with today’s most celebrated conductors, orchestras, and presenters.
Next weekend, Feb. 16–18, Meyers takes the reins of the Laguna Beach Music Festival as this year’s artistic director, performing in three programs, the first of which features works by Arvo Pärt and Heitor Villa-Lobos, as well as a world premiere by Philip Glass. Hailed as “the Wonder Woman of commissioning” by The Strad magazine, the violinist was recently nominated for a Grammy Award for her live recording with Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Phil of Arturo Márquez’s concerto Fandango, written for her in 2021.
Born in San Diego, Meyers began violin lessons with Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld at the Community School of Performing Arts (now the Colburn School) before moving to New York at age 14 to study at The Juilliard School with the legendary teacher Dorothy DeLay. Just four years later, Meyers recorded her debut album, which featured concertos by Samuel Barber and Max Bruch, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) at Abbey Road Studios.
Read more here.
BBC Music Magazine: Amelia Earhart: how the tragic story of the aviation pioneer inspired a thrilling new violin concerto for Anne Akiko Meyers
Legendary adventurer and feminist icon Amelia Earhart set two world records in 1932 – flying alone across the Atlantic Ocean in 15 hours, becoming the first woman and only the second person in history to do so; and subsequently flying non-stop across the US, again the first time a woman had achieved the feat.
These magnificent records made Earhart an instant worldwide sensation. Independent and adventurous since childhood, she knew on her very first flight in December 1920 with experienced pilot Frank Hawks that her place was in the air. ‘As soon as I left the ground, I knew I myself had to fly,’ she revealed.
BBC Music Magazine
By Charlotte Smith
Legendary adventurer and feminist icon Amelia Earhart set two world records in 1932 – flying alone across the Atlantic Ocean in 15 hours, becoming the first woman and only the second person in history to do so; and subsequently flying non-stop across the US, again the first time a woman had achieved the feat.
These magnificent records made Earhart an instant worldwide sensation. Independent and adventurous since childhood, she knew on her very first flight in December 1920 with experienced pilot Frank Hawks that her place was in the air. ‘As soon as I left the ground, I knew I myself had to fly,’ she revealed.
Read more here.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
KUSC: Classical Californians: Anne Akiko Meyers
This week, our Classical Californian will be violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, who will share some of her favorite pieces of music. The playlist includes two composers who have written concertos for her, some selections from the world of movie music, as well as works by a pair of composers best known for their writing for choral voices. The Southern California native has most recently released a recording of Fandango by Arturo Márquez, with Gustavo Dudamel leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She’s worked with a who’s who of contemporary composers, and since making her first national TV appearance on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson when she was 11, she’s been performing to admiring audiences around the world. The instrument that she plays, the “Ex-Vieuxtemps Guarneri del Gesù” dates from 1741, and belonged to the Belgian violinist Henri Vieuxtemps in the 1800s.
KUSC
This week, our Classical Californian will be violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, who will share some of her favorite pieces of music. The playlist includes two composers who have written concertos for her, some selections from the world of movie music, as well as works by a pair of composers best known for their writing for choral voices. The Southern California native has most recently released a recording of Fandango by Arturo Márquez, with Gustavo Dudamel leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She’s worked with a who’s who of contemporary composers, and since making her first national TV appearance on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson when she was 11, she’s been performing to admiring audiences around the world. The instrument that she plays, the “Ex-Vieuxtemps Guarneri del Gesù” dates from 1741, and belonged to the Belgian violinist Henri Vieuxtemps in the 1800s.
Read more here.
Photo Credit: Dina Douglass
NPR: Anne Akiko Meyers: Tiny Desk Concert
When violinist Anne Akiko Meyers walked into NPR headquarters, I half expected her to be flanked by bodyguards. After all, she was carrying a very rare instrument. Her Guarneri del Gesù "Vieuxtemps" violin, built in 1741, is worth at least $16 million. Instead, Meyers arrived only with a pair of publicists and the perceptive pianist Max Levinson. She seemed nonchalant about the fact that her fiddle is worth a fortune.
What matters, naturally, is how the instrument sounds and few can make a violin sing as sweetly as Meyers. The San Diego native was already performing on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson at age 11. Three years later she enrolled in New York's Juilliard School and at 18 cut the first of her 40-some albums.
NPR
By Tom Huizenga
When violinist Anne Akiko Meyers walked into NPR headquarters, I half expected her to be flanked by bodyguards. After all, she was carrying a very rare instrument. Her Guarneri del Gesù "Vieuxtemps" violin, built in 1741, is worth at least $16 million. Instead, Meyers arrived only with a pair of publicists and the perceptive pianist Max Levinson. She seemed nonchalant about the fact that her fiddle is worth a fortune.
What matters, naturally, is how the instrument sounds and few can make a violin sing as sweetly as Meyers. The San Diego native was already performing on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson at age 11. Three years later she enrolled in New York's Juilliard School and at 18 cut the first of her 40-some albums.
Read more here or watch below.
San Francisco Classical Voice: Anne Akiko Meyers Brings Fandango to Symphony San José
Symphony San José’s concert on May 6 at the California Theatre featured Anne Akiko Meyers as soloist in Mexican composer Arturo Márquez’s new violin concerto, Fandango. Meyers requested the work from Márquez and gave the first performance, with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, in August 2021. Since then, she has been taking the piece around on her guest appearances.
So it’s fortunate that when San José’s intended guest conductor, Tatsuya Shimono, withdrew for personal reasons less than two weeks before the concert, the Symphony was able to secure José Luis Gómez, music director of the Tucson Symphony, as a replacement. He had conducted Meyers in this same concerto in a Tucson program last September.
San Francisco Classical Voice
By David Bratman
Symphony San José’s concert on May 6 at the California Theatre featured Anne Akiko Meyers as soloist in Mexican composer Arturo Márquez’s new violin concerto, Fandango. Meyers requested the work from Márquez and gave the first performance, with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, in August 2021. Since then, she has been taking the piece around on her guest appearances.
So it’s fortunate that when San José’s intended guest conductor, Tatsuya Shimono, withdrew for personal reasons less than two weeks before the concert, the Symphony was able to secure José Luis Gómez, music director of the Tucson Symphony, as a replacement. He had conducted Meyers in this same concerto in a Tucson program last September.
Meyers had been inspired to approach Márquez after hearing the composer’s Danzón No. 2, a boundlessly joyful expression of the character of Veracruz’s dance music that’s become something of a signature piece for Dudamel. Meyers hoped that Márquez could import something of the same spirit into a violin concerto. It turned out that the composer, whose father was a mariachi violinist, had already been thinking along those lines.
Read more here.
Photo Credit: Allen Murabayashi