Anne Akiko Meyers likes to commission and play music by living composers. A lot. The running list of composers she’s commissioned is a who’s-who of modern music, and her recording work is just as robust: she’s recorded an album almost every year since 1988, an output that includes two Latin GRAMMY awards.
She’ll be playing with the Louisville Orchestra with Eric Whitacre conducting, and performing two personally meaningful works of his. The Seal Lullaby, sung by Voces8, was comfort-music for Meyers during the pandemic, and now she gets her own arrangement. The other work is Whitacre’s response to the 2025 Palisades Fire, which displaced Meyers and her family, and destroyed the community where they lived:The Pacific Has No Memory (titled after a line from The Shawshank Redemption).
In this interview, Meyers talks about the emotional toll of the fires, how she has been coping (through music), and the importance of this particular performance of this new work.
Anne Akiko Meyers talking with Daniel Gilliam
If you’re going to be at the concert on Saturday, get there early (6:15 p.m.) for my Concert Talk with Anne Akiko Meyers and Eric Whitacre.
