The Colburn School Names Anne Akiko Meyers as Honorary Doctorate Recipient

A Colburn alumna, Meyers performs solo with leading orchestras worldwide and has contributed over 40 releases as a recording artist

Los Angeles’ Colburn School will award violinist Anne Akiko Meyers with an honorary doctorate on May 1, 2023, at its commencement ceremony, where Meyers will also feature as the keynote speaker. 

Hailing from Southern California, Meyers first trained at Colburn’s Community School with Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld. She later attended the Juilliard School, studying with Dorothy DeLay, Masao Kawasaki, and Felix Galimir.

At age 16, Meyers signed with management, launching her international career as one of today’s foremost violinists. She has since won an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Colburn School’s Distinguished Alumna Award, and was recently made a member of the Juilliard School’s board of trustees. 

Alongside student speakers Aubree Oliverson and Ross Jamie Collins, Meyers will address 61 Colburn graduates — the largest cohort in the school’s history — many of whom will play professionally with the Atlanta Symphony, Charlotte Symphony, Florida Symphony, and the New World Symphony, among others. Open to the public, the ceremony will not require tickets. 

Meyers is also well-known for championing living composers, having commissioned and performed new works to great acclaim. She has premiered new music with orchestras across the U.S., Asia, Europe, and the South Pacific. 

Her collaborators have included composers Arvo Pärt, Einojuhani Rautavaara, John Corigliano, Arturo Márquez, Michael Daugherty, Mason Bates, Adam Schoenberg, Jakub Ciupiński, Jennifer Higdon, Samuel Jones, Morten Lauridsen, Wynton Marsalis, Akira Miyoshi, Somei Satoh, and Joseph Schwantner.

Meyers has appeared on national television and in numerous ad campaigns and commercials. Also a prolific recording artist, her latest albums include “Mysterium,” involving works by J.S. Bach and Morten Lauridsen.

Her current season engagements include the Los Angeles, National, Albany, Detroit, Nashville, Princeton, San Diego, San Jose, Tucson, and Wichita Symphony Orchestras. 

She performs on the famous 1741 “Ex-Vieuxtemps” Guarneri del Gesù violin.

The Colburn School offers top-tier instruction in music and dance, seeing over 2,000 students worldwide visit and attend each year. The school is named for Richard D. Colburn, who helped reform it as an independent, not-for-profit institution in the 1980s — the same period Meyers was a student there. An interview with Meyers by the school is available here.