Composer Jessica Meyer Doubles As Soloist In Premiere Of Viola Concerto, GAEA, With The Orchestra Of The League Of Composers, May 25

Award-winning composer and violist Jessica Meyer will be the featured soloist in the world premiere of her own new work GAEA: Concerto for Amplified Viola and Chamber Orchestra. She'll perform alongside the Orchestra of the League of Composers - which commissioned the work - on Thursday, May 25, 2023 at 8:00pm at Columbia University's Miller Theatre in New York. Louis Karchin, Music Director of the Orchestra of the League of Composers, will conduct.

Meyer describes how this work was conceived around the Gaea of Greek mythology, the primordial goddess of the Earth. "When I started writing for myself and loop pedal after years of performing acoustic contemporary music, I discovered an entire vocabulary of fragile colors and expressive sounds simply because I was amplified," she says. "This concerto for amplified viola marries the wealth of colors and gestures spectral composers have developed throughout the 20th century, while also incorporating the virtuosity of baroque string playing, to tell the story of Gaea."

According to Hesiod's version of Greek Mythology, Gaea was the goddess of the Earth and one of the primordial deities born at the dawn of creation (Chaos). All the heavenly gods were descended from her through her union with Uranus, but he was so jealous of his offspring (the Titans, the Cyclops, and the Hecatoncheires) that he kept shoving them back into Gaea's womb. In great pain, she asks her children for help, and Cronus comes to her aid to maim his father. Uranus' blood falls into the sea, and the goddess Aphrodite is born from the foam over the water where it fell. She rises from the waves on her shell and sails to the shore of the island of Cythera, introduced to the world with great fanfare.

Thursday, May 25, 2023 at 8:00pm
World Premiere of GAEA with the Orchestra of the League of Composers
Miller Theatre | New York, NY
Link: http://leagueofcomposers.org/2022-2023-season

Program:
Eleanor Cory - Canyons (1991)
Edward Smaldone - Prendendo Fuoco for Piano and Orchestra (2022, World Premiere, OLC Commission)
Jessica Meyer - GAEA: Concerto for Amplified Viola and Chamber Orchestra (2022, World Premiere, OLC commission)

The Orchestra of the League of Composers
Louis Karchin, Music Director and conductor
David Fulmer, conductor (Smaldone)
Jessica Meyer, viola
Niklas Sivelöv, piano

Jessica Meyer is an award-winning composer and violist whose passionate musicianship radiates accessibility and emotional clarity. Her first composer/performer portrait album, Ring Out (Bright Shiny Things, 2019) debuted at #1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical Chart.

Her first Symphonic Band piece was recently premiered by the President's Own Marine Band (first at Strathmore then the NY premiere in Carnegie Hall), and her orchestral works have been performed by the Phoenix, North Carolina, Charlotte, and Vermont Symphonies, the Nu Deco Ensemble in Miami, at Tanglewood in Seiji Ozawa Hall, and all around the country as part of Carnegie Hall's nationwide Link Up Program. She was the winner of the 2nd Annual Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Composer's Award to write a piece for the Bangor Symphony, and a winner of Chamber Music America's Commissioning Program Award to write for the Argus Quartet. Recent chamber/solo premieres included a work for CityMusic Cleveland, musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra, and for the Five Borough Songbook.

Meyer's compositions viscerally explore the wide palette of emotionally expressive colors available to each instrument while using traditional and extended techniques inspired by her varied experiences as a contemporary and period instrumentalist. Since embarking on her composition career eight years ago, premieres have included performances by acclaimed vocal ensembles Roomful of Teeth and Vox Clamantis, the St. Lawrence String Quartet as the composer in residence at Spoleto Festival USA, the American Brass Quintet, PUBLIQuartet, cellist Amanda Gookin for her Forward Music Project, Sybarite 5, NOVUS NY of Trinity Wall Street, a work for A Far Cry commissioned by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, The Juilliard School for a project with the Historical Performance Program, and by the Lorelei Ensemble for a song cycle that received the Dale Warland Singers Commission Award from Chorus America.

As a solo performer, Meyer is internationally renowned for her use of a single simple loop pedal to create a virtuosic orchestral experience with her viola and voice. Drawing from wide-ranging influences which include Bach, Brahms, Delta blues, Flamenco, Indian Raga, and Appalachian fiddling, Meyer's music takes audience members on a journey through joy, anxiety, anger, bliss, torment, loneliness and passion. Her solo shows have been featured at iconic venues such as BAMcafé, Joe's Pub, and Symphony Space in NYC, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, in Paris at Sunset Sunside, in addition to venues in Singapore, Switzerland, Vietnam, the Emirates and beyond. At home with many different styles of music and an ardent collaborator, Meyer can regularly be seen premiering her chamber works, playing with established New York City ensembles such as NOVUS NY at Trinity Wall Street, performing on Baroque viola, improvising with jazz musicians, or collaborating with other composer-performers.

Jessica Meyer is equally known for her inspirational work as an educator, where she empowers musicians with networking, communication, teaching, and entrepreneurial skills so they can be the best advocates for their own careers. Her workshops have been featured at The Juilliard School, the Curtis Institute of Music, for the Teaching Artists of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Manhattan School of Music, the Longy School of Music, New York University, the Chamber Music America Conference, and at various universities around the country. Meyer has conducted hundreds of workshops for students and adults for Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Caramoor, the Little Orchestra Society, and the Orchestra of St. Luke's. Currently, she is most passionate about getting musicians of all ages off the page to activate their own creativity, improvise, and awaken their own inner composer - which in turn makes them better performers. In addition to teaching virtual workshops, her most recent engagements have been for the Moab Music Festival, the National Youth Orchestra of Carnegie Hall, and for the North Carolina Chamber Music Institute. Since last summer, she has been the Composer in Residence at the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival. Learn more at www.jessicameyermusic.com.

*Photo Credit: Dario Acosta