Jessica Meyer

Biography

With playing that is “fierce and lyrical” and works that are “other-worldly” (The Strad) and “evocative” (New York Times), Jessica Meyer is an award-winning composer and violist whose passionate musicianship radiates accessibility and emotional clarity. Her first composer/performer portrait album in 2019 debuted at #1 on the Billboard traditional classical chart, where “knife-edge anticipation opens on to unexpected, often ecstatic musical realms, always with a personal touch and imaginatively written for the instruments” (Gramophone Magazine). Since embarking on her composition career ten 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, NOVUS NY of Trinity Wall Street, A Far Cry, the Juilliard School, and the Lorelei Ensemble for a song cycle that received the Dale Warland Singers Commission Award from Chorus America.

Her first Symphonic Band piece was recently premiered by the President’s Own Marine Band (with a sold-out NY premiere in Carnegie Hall), and her orchestral works have been performed 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 premieres included works for the Dorian Wind Quintet, Hausmann Quartet, Hub New Music, the Portland Youth Philharmonic in collaboration with the female vocal ensemble In Mulieribus, and her viola concerto “GAEA” with the Orchestra of the League of Composers at Miller Theatre in NYC. Since the Fall of 2023, she has joined the Viola Faculty of the Manhattan School of Music.