Anne Akiko Myers is a multi-Grammy winning global artist with more than 40 releases, and she’s coming here to Modesto to perform two Valentine’s Day concerts with the Modesto Symphony. But, it’s not just any regular concert. Anne is also known as the ”Wonder Woman of Commissioning” given her frequent close work with the world’s best composers, and she’s bringing with her a brand new violin concerto to the Modesto stage.
CapRadio’s Jennifer Reason sat down with Anne to discuss her life in music and the upcoming show.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Interview Highlights
Let's jump right in straight at the very beginning. How did you get your start in music? What led you to the violin?
Um… It was forced on me. No, I'm kidding. Actually, my mother read about how important it is for a baby's development to listen to music, so she played a lot of music for me when I was actually in utero. [That] really continued my love for it. I started actually studying violin when I was four years old, but I had already listened to a lot of music by then.
So did it feel very natural when you started to make music yourself?
Actually it did. I received a violin and I actually started it upside down, and my father flipped it around and said, you know, it goes this way. And I'm still to this day trying to figure it out!
You went from that to playing an extraordinarily special violin. Tell us about your individual instrument.
So currently I'm playing on this beautiful violin that was made in 1741. It's older than our country, which is really hard to wrap your head around. It was made by this Cremonese maker who was just a legendary violin maker named Guarneri del Gesu. He made very few violins, only about 120 or so instruments. Many of them are not in great shape, except for the one that I'm performing on. It [previously] belonged to this Belgian composer and violinist who was so in love with the violin, he actually wanted to be buried with it. And how thankfully, he was not.
I have so many questions about the music you'll be performing here in Modesto, but before we get to that, your family was displaced in the Southern CA fires. What role has music played for you as you've started to move past it?
A really special work was created because of that tragedy. It was written by Eric Whitacre and it's called “The Pacific Has No Memory.” I've been performing this work a lot, and it's very, very soothing and deeply emotional. It's just amazing how music can really heal and help you transcend, and just kind of see things in a different perspective. But, you know, this music that I'm going to be playing with the Modesto Symphony is really something very, very uniquely special. It was written by Arturo Marquez, he's a genius composer. I reached out to him years ago with this crazy idea to write a violin concerto with some traditional Mexican folk themes and mariachi inspired music throughout it. He was very intrigued with this whole idea thankfully, and wrote me back saying that he would love to try to write a violin concerto. Now it's only five years old, but I have performed it over forty times with sixteen or seventeen different orchestras. It's won two Latin Grammys. It's really just lightning. People will dance in their chairs when they listen to it, and it's very soulful. I mean, it just has such a combination of emotions throughout it and it's always so much fun to play.
I'd love to imagine such an old special violin interpreting that kind of music in particular. What a wonderful turn of history. But speaking of commissioning, you’ve commissioned a lot. Why is it important to commission to add to the canon in this way?
I love and thrive on working with living composers. I just want to hear from their minds directly, you know, they have so much to say. Not only is it the language of today, but the respect that they have for traditional music inspires me to actually go back to that music. You play Vivaldi, let's say, in a different way because you have worked with Arvo Part or you understand the importance of silence in between the notes. And when you have these different perspectives that are bringing you to the music in a myriad of different angles, you're feeling the music as a story. There's a story to be told with each composer and their beautiful imaginations and what they bring to the manuscript paper. You just never know what's going to happen. There's a definite risk involved, but it's also just so fascinating to me to see what a composer can come up with, you know, with “blank”. Tabula Rasa.
So true, and I think it's important for audiences today to remember that all of the composers that are now the canon were once the new composers as they were writing. It was they who were on the forefront. They were disliked. They were trying new things and we forget that. I think people like you who are contributing to the canon for the future are so important.
Oh, yes. I absolutely agree that to make the violin repertoire larger, it's only a great legacy to leave behind, for sure, especially with composers that are bringing mariachi flavors. That's going to appeal to an audience who hasn't seen themselves reflected on the classical stage, potentially. And the thing is, with Arturo's music you feel like you've heard it your entire life, you know? And to have to create something like that, that just feels so old world but also so fresh and new at the same time. It's like, wow, I never knew that I missed that music.
Do you have any other comments you want to share with us about the upcoming Modesto shows in particular?
Well, I think it's so special that Modesto has scheduled these two concerts, especially on Valentine's Day. So, bring your Valentine in and experience this really romantic music that will make you dance and cry and weep and laugh. It's just so much fun to perform. I'm really looking forward to returning to Modesto with it.
