Mitzi Meyerson was born into a musical family in Chicago, where she began her concert career at the age of seven. After completing her university and graduate studies in Chicago and Oberlin, she moved to London to co-found the ensemble Trio Sonnerie (with Monica Huggett and Sarah Cunningham), with whom she performed and recorded extensively.
Mitzi Meyerson has released over fifty recordings, among them solo albums of Buxtehude, Duphly, the complete works of Forqueray and JKF Fischer, all to excellent critical acclaim. Her recent releases include two double-CD sets for Glossa of music by Georg Böhm and Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (and both productions were awarded the prestigious Deutsche Schallplattenkritik prize in Germany for the best recordings of the year on an international level). She also released a solo recital of mixed repertoire for the Musikinstrumenten Museum in Berlin, four complete Ordres from the 4th Book of François Couperin (Les Ombres Errantes, again for Glossa), as well as a collaboration with Nigel Kennedy and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (EMI). Currently Mitzi Meyerson is preparing another double-CD set for Glossa, this time with music by Theofilo Muffat.
In addition to her solo work, Mitzi Meyerson is the founder of The Bottom Line, a variable ensemble devoted to repertoire for bass and continuo instruments, which appears in major festivals across Europe. The most popular form of The Bottom Line is the Berliner Cembalo Ensemble, a group of three to five harpsichords, which has a continually growing repertoire. She is full Professor of Harpsichord at the Universität der Künste in Berlin; this was the very first university to offer the study of the harpsichord, a position created especially for Wanda Landowska. Mitzi Meyerson specializes in working with modern pianists to obtain a baroque-style perspective in the performance of Bach, developing an awareness of articulation, harmonic structure, and many other aspects.
Mitzi Meyerson divides her time between a busy teaching schedule and many concert engagements throughout the world. Mitzi Meyerson’s other interests include photography (she has presented several exhibitions in Germany and England), social work (she volunteers in a birth clinic as a doula), sumo wrestling, and her beautiful Persian cat, Yofi.
It is not only discerning music lovers around the globe who are giving a warm welcome to the recordings which are being published on Glossa; critical approval in the specialist media has been joining in as well. One example of the latter is the newly-instigated International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) which, for its inaugural 2011 edition, has chosen no less than nine of Glossa’s recent releases in its initial nominations. [read more...]
There are keyboard players whose names adorn books of technical exercises – Carl Czerny, Charles-Louis Hanon and JB Cramer spring to mind – but Mitzi Meyerson, Glossa’s very own expert in sumo wrestling, social work and a Persian cat named Yofi, is cast from a somewhat different mould. It will not just be piano and harpsichord students who will have cause to recall the Chicago-born artist but any number of her fellow citizens (including non keyboard-playing cabbies) now that the ‘Mitzi Meyerson Way’ has officially been opened outside the main entrance to Roosevelt University on downtown Wabash Avenue in Chicago’s 2nd Ward. [read more...]