Lavinia Meijer & Amsterdam Sinfonietta
Biographie Lavinia Meijer & Amsterdam Sinfonietta
Lavinia Meijer
performs solo concerts in venues worldwide from Carnegie Hall NYC to the Berlin Philharmonie, being one of the most important, pioneering and exciting musicians of our times.
Born in South Korea and adopted at the age of 2, Lavinia Meijer is now based in the Netherlands. At only 9 years old, she started to play the harp. She studied at the conservatories of Utrecht (she was admitted to the conservatory at the age of 11) and Amsterdam, receiving her BA and MA with the highest distinction. Aged only 14, Lavinia Meijer was already performing with symphony orchestras. Her passion to broaden the possibilities of the harp is noteworthy. Not only does Mrs. Meijer search for rare classical solo & orchestral repertoire, she is also always on the alert for contemporary music possibilities, performing together with Òlafur Arnalds and others. She performs pieces by Radiohead in classical venues, to great artistic & critical acclaim and enjoys commercial success for her albums. Ms Meijer tours extensively all over the world in classical and rock venues and at outdoor festivals. Ms Meijer has received numerous awards, including 2 gold discs and a certified platinum disc for the album Metamorphosis / The Hours with pieces by the acclaimed American composer, Philip Glass.
In May 2011 she had the honour to meet Mr. Glass in person, who gave permission for Ms. Meijer to transcribe his 5-piece Metamorphosis for harp. Since then she has transcribed various other works by Philip Glass, including Opening Piece, various movements from the Hours and the main theme from Koyaanisqatsi. In 2014 Lavinia joined Philip Glass again on stage for a sold out concert in Amsterdam. Recently she was invited to perform with Mr. Glass at his Days & Nights Festival in Big Sur, USA. All over the world, Lavinia Meijer mesmerizes audiences with her intense and ground-breaking renditions of Philip Glass repertoire.
Besides performing the classical standard harp repertoire, Mrs. Meijer experiments with electronic music, theatrical music, jazz and avant rock. Composers like Ludwig Ellis-Leone, Garrett Byrnes, Paul Patterson, Carlos Michans, Konstantia Gourzi and JacobTV have all written pieces for Mrs. Meijer. JacobTV wrote her the suite Cities, changing the songs of birds for harp and boombox. This piece, about the poorest in New York society, consisted of music put to samples of conversations from drug-addicted women with criminal records. It caused an instant scandal (some of the audience walked out during the première) and was a sensation among the international harp societies, triggering lengthy and heated debates about the artist’s right to perform “this kind of music” with samples and a boom-box on an instrument like the harp, traditionally considered as ‘angelic’.
Ms. Meijer has performed on international stages such as Carnegie Hall, NYC; Royal Concertgebouw, Amsterdam; Paradiso, Amsterdam; Musikverein, Vienna; Carré, Amsterdam; Philharmonie, Berlin, Cité de la Musique, Paris; Bronfman Auditorium,Tel Aviv; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, and Seoul Arts Center. As a featured soloist she has performed harp concertos with renowned orchestras such as Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, and Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, working with such leading conductors as Andrew Grams, Thierry Fischer, Charles Floyd, Frans Brüggen, Hannu Lintu, and Marco Boni. Ms. Meijer played Bryce Dessner’s exciting piece Aheym as the special chosen guest artist of Kronos Quartet and Mr. Dessner pledged to write her a new composition.
Lavinia Meijer is the only classical artist to have hit the top 10 in the Dutch rock album charts with three consecutive albums. She starred in a TV commercial for the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum in 2015. Her albums Passaggio and Voyage were recorded in Berlin by the noted Tonmeister and 15x Grammy Award winner, Andreas Neubronner. Recently she released both Voyage, her seventh solo album with music by Debussy, Tiersen, Satie and Ravel, a live-recording with bandoneonist, Carel Kraayenhof: In Concert and The Glass Effect, to celebrate Philip Glass’s 80th birthday in 2017.
