Ari Benjamin Meyers

is known for the amazingly wide spectrum of his musical activities – he has conducted opera and world premieres, has played in various rock bands, has composed operas as well as music for theater, film, and dance, and started Club Redux, a series of club events featuring Redux Orchestra, bringing modern music into the Berlin club scene and beyond. Collaborators have included Einstürzende Neubauten (with whom he has made two cd’s), The Orb, Sun Electric, the theater director Thomas Krupa, and the film director Dominik Wesely. Most recently for the production Il Tempo del Postino as part of the inaugural Manchester International Festival he worked closely with a number of leading visual artists including Matthew Barney, Trisha Donnelly, Dominique Gonzales-Foerster, Anri Sala, and Tino Sehgal.
Born 1972 in New York, his musical training in piano, composing, and conducting included studies at The Juilliard School, a B.A. (cum laude) from Yale University, and a M.M. from Peabody Conservatory. His teachers included Jacob Druckman, Anthony Davis, Martin Bresnick, Frederik Prausnitz, and Laszlo Halasz. A Fulbright Scholarship brought him in 1996 to Berlin, where he currently resides. In 1999 his opera Defendants Rosenberg (recipient of a Margaret Jory Grant and an ASCAP Young Composer Award) was given its world premiere by the State Opera of Magdeburg, Germany. Further commissions followed including works for the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Euregio Music Festival, Figura Ensemble, the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Lauder Foundation, the Eberhard von Kuenheim Foundation, Harry White, and the saxophone quartet Clair-Obscur. He has also written the music for theater productions in Berlin, Hamburg, Dortmund, Darmstadt, and Freiburg. His most recent opera, NICO. Sphinx aus Eis (libretto: Werner Fritsch) was commissioned by the Semper Opera Dresden and given its premiere there in June of 2005 with the composer conducting.
In addition to conducting his own works and other new music, Ari Benjamin Meyers is considered a specialist for the performance of music by Kurt Weil as well as the New York minimalists. He was the conductor of the Maxim Gorki Theater’s production of Brecht/Weill’s The Threepenny Opera, which had a run of 108 sold out shows. He also was music director of the only two sanctioned productions of Wilson/Glass’ Einstein on the Beach to be performed without the participation of the Philip Glass Ensemble.
He is the founder and artistic director of Club Redux and with his own ensemble, Redux Orchestra, he gives many concerts throughout Germany and Europe.
In May 2007 he was named (with Markus Richter) as artistic director of MODEM: space for contemporary music and arts, a new 23,000m² performance and exhibition space occupying a former power plant in the heart of Berlin.
The German newspaper Die Tagesspiegel once described the music of Ari Benjamin Meyers so: “…it has its own unique intensity, does not fit in any categories.”

A.B. Meyers, long bio (en)

A.B. Meyers, kurz Bio (de)

A.B. Meyers, lang Bio (de)