Revered violinist Anne Akiko Meyers performs Canadian premiere of Fandango with VSO
The piece by Mexican composer Arturo Márquez is a mariachi-themed violin concerto
Anne Akiko Meyers.
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra presents Stravinsky, Ravel & Márquez featuring Anne Akiko Meyers on October 18 at 7 pm at the Orpheum and October 20 at Bell Performing Arts Centre at 7 pm
WHEN RENOWNED VIOLINIST Anne Akiko Meyers first heard Danzon No. 2 by Mexican contemporary classical composer Arturo Márquez, she was immediately enraptured. The piece is so popular in its native country that it has been called Mexico’s second national anthem. The artist decided to reach out to Márquez directly to ask him if he would consider writing a mariachi-inspired violin concerto for her. She heard back from him about a year later, and he told her he had been waiting his whole life to create such a piece of music. The result was Fandango, which will have its Canadian premiere this month when Meyers performs with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra October 18 and 20.
“I was listening to a live concert performance online and it was just mesmerizing,” Meyers says of Danzon No. 2 in a phone interview from her Los Angeles home. “When I found out afterward it was written by a living composer my mouth just fell to the ground, because it sounded like Mussorgsky and Ravel, and it just sounded like music I’ve known my whole life….When I received a response from my email asking ‘Would you have any desire or consideration to write a violin concerto based on a mariachi theme?’ he was very intrigued by this. His father was a mariachi violinist, so when we met each other for the first time he told me he had been waiting for decades to write this concerto; it was waiting in his heart, kind of percolating and marinating inside his heart for decades.”
Meyers describes Fandango as “extraordinary music”, which showcases Márquez’s storytelling abilities. “You feel like it’s music you’ve heard your whole life, yet it’s fresh and it’s rhythmic and very virtuosic,” the musician explains. “The first movement is 20 minutes long, so it mirrors Tchaikovsky's violin concerto with its length, and the second movement is based on a chaconne, and it’s a delicious, naughty dance that was forbidden by Spanish inquisition, so it’s kind of the soul of the piece. Then the last movement is just an absolute tour de force, with rhythmic interplay between myself and the orchestra, and it’s just a real romp—a wild, fast romp to the end, and it’s just incredibly exciting music—very colourful and soulful and joyful.”
Joyfulness very much describes Meyers’s relationship with the violin, which she first played when she was four years old. The artist says she was introduced to classical music through her mother, who listened to violin concertos while she was pregnant and breastfeeding. “It’s one of the most beautiful forms of expression,” she says, “and I love to feel like a storyteller with the music that I play and the living composers I work with. I really just feel music to the depths of my soul and I can’t live without it.”
Meyers’s live recording of Fandango with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic was nominated for two Latin Grammy Awards, including best classical album and best classical contemporary composition, and received two 2024 Grammy nominations. The Vancouver performances, conducted by Andrew Litton, will also include Valses nobles et sentimentales and La Valse by Maurice Ravel, and Igor Stravinsky’s The Fairy’s Kiss. In between her local appearances, Meyers, whose mother is of Japanese descent, will be inducted into the Asian Hall of Fame, which honours leading members of the Asian community across a vast array of disciplines.
Meyers has been called “the Wonder Woman of commissioning” by The Strad and has worked closely with some of the world’s most sought-after composers, including Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt, John Corigliano, Wynton Marsalis, and more, performing world premieres with symphony orchestras across the globe.
The violinist made her first U.S. television appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson at age 11, while John Williams personally chose her to perform the theme from Schindler’s List for a Great Performances PBS telecast, and Pärt invited her to be his guest soloist at the opening ceremony concerts of his new concert hall in Estonia.
Other career highlights include performances for the Emperor and Empress Akihito of Japan and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, as well as playing Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, Op. 14 at the Australian Bicentennial Concert for an audience of 750,000 in Sydney Harbour. Meyers has collaborated with everyone from Il Divo to Michael Bolton.
Having grown up in Southern California, Meyers moved to New York at the age of 14 to study at The Juilliard School and recorded her debut album at 18. She performs on the Ex-Vieuxtemps Guarneri del Gesù, dating back to 1741, which is considered by many to be the finest-sounding violin in existence, as well as the most valuable. 
Related Articles
