Edgar Meyer
Edgar Meyer ( born November 24, 1960 in Tulsa, Oklahoma ) is an American bass virtuoso, composer and arranger.
Meyer is the son of a double bass player; Edgar Meyer, Sr. led an orchestra program for students in Oak Ridge ( Tennessee) and gave his son a solid fundamental knowledge on his instrument. His formal music training included Edgar, Jr. from at Stuart Sankey, at that time one of the most respected bass instructors in the USA, and with studies at Indiana University in Bloomington.
His actual professional career began Meyer as a studio musician in the country metropolis of Nashville. He unites in his distinctive personal style influences several initially quite disparate appearing genres, which are in themselves usually as pronounced as " American" or " European" connotes. He is among a small group of contemporary musicians who have initiated since the mid- 1980s, new developments in the Bluegrass.
Meyer has but also interprets significant works of the baroque, especially his recordings of Johann Sebastian Bach's cello suites (BWV 1007, 1008 and 1011 ) on the double bass great international attention. Even the music of European Romanticism found in Meyer an innovative performer: To His published on CD " showpieces " for double bass include the Trout Quintet (D. 667 ) and the Arpeggione Sonata (D. 821 ) by Franz Schubert. Two of the most important compositions of the Italian double bass virtuoso Giovanni Bottesini ( the Concerto no. 2 in B minor and the Gran Duo Concertante ) combined Meyer appeared on a 2002 CD with two of his own solo concerts.
As composer and instrumentalist Meyer denied due to his eclectic work methods easy categorization. Relative characteristic of his work to date, however, a preference for small, chamber-music oriented occupations. Besides the compositions already mentioned he created - in addition to numerous, oriented to common American song structures " improvisational vehicles " - a solo concert for violin, a double concerto for bass and cello and a string quintet, which he himself with the Emerson String Quartet premiered together and recorded.
Among the many years of close companions of bass players are artists like cellist Yo- Yo Ma, the banjo player Béla Fleck and violinist Joshua Bell, who like Meyer himself to overcome stylistic boundaries between the "classical music " in Europe, the "urban, black "Jazz and the " provincial " Blue Grass rural America is located. With these musicians, he also scored his greatest success with the general public: Short Trip Home by 1999 was nominated for a Grammy, Appalachian Journey from the following year, once and Perpetual Motion, again a year later, even twice awarded the prize. In 2002 he was given a $ 500,000 MacArthur Fellowship awarded doped.
On the 2006 released, simply titled CD Edgar Meyer played the musician all the pieces - invariably own compositions - on various instruments (besides the bass and mandolin, dobro, guitar, viola da gamba and piano) it self.