Edgar Meyer (1961-); USA Edgar Meyer emerged in the 1990s as one of the world's most talented string bass players, at home, remarkably, in both the classical repertory and in bluegrass. He is also a composer whose works achieved wide diffusion in the late 1990s; they served as cornerstones in the efforts of Sony to forge new audiences for classical music by offering compositions with a direct, accessible musical language. Born in Oklahoma City, Meyer was the son of a bass player. When he was two or three years old he started imitating his father by holding a broom, pretending it was a bass. He started learning on a real instrument at five years old, taking lessons from his father. The instrument was a 1933 bass made in Czechoslovakia and in use, hanging from someone's ceiling, as a flower planter. Meyer has said that he grew up with the bass as his primary means of personal expression, and became committed to the instrument so early that he is unable to remember a time when he was not playing it. Later he studied with Stuart Sankey, but still credits his father as his primary teacher. He attended Indiana University, studying with James Buswell. Meyer won numerous competitions and from the beginning forged a crossover career, playing with classical musicians as well as popular and country acts. What steered him toward country music was his encounter, in his early twenties, with the virtuosic and complex progressive bluegrass music of the 1980s, as exemplified by such performers as Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, and Béla Fleck. He has toured and/or recorded with Garth Brooks, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Hank Williams, Jr., Emmylou Harris, James Taylor, Lyle Lovett, Reba McEntire, Tris Tritt, the Chieftains, the Indigo Girls, Yo-Yo Ma, Paul Shaffer and the CBS Orchestra, Joshua Bell, and Mark O'Connor. From 1986 to 1992 he was a member of a progressive bluegrass band called Strength in Numbers. He began to compose around 1990, primarily to write down things that had emerged from "noodling around" and improvising, wanting to "codify" them into pieces. He was a regular performer at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival from 1985 to 1993, and six of his earliest compositions were intended for performance there. He has composed a double bass concerto, a bass quartet, a work called Trout Variations (based on the Schubert song), a string trio, a violin concerto (premiered and recorded by Hilary Hahn), and a double concerto for bass and cello. Much of his music is influenced by bluegrass and traditional American folk styles. In the late '90s and early 2000s, Meyer became an important participant in the American-flored crossover albums of cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Meyer records exclusively for Sony. He is married to violinist Connie Heard; they he one son. He has been a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1994, and in that same year became the first bassist to win the Avery Fisher Career Grant.
关于希拉里·哈恩的小提琴 在小提琴制琴及收藏史上有一名重要人物名叫Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume(1798 -1875),他是法国很有名的制琴家及名琴收藏家。Vuillaume经手过数十把的Stradivari及Guarneri del Gesu名琴。由于他惊人的收藏,加上他个人是制琴家因而他以Stradivari及Guarneri del Gesu名琴为模型复制了不少琴,有个故事说:当年Vuillaume与Paganini是好友,有次Vuillaume偷偷地以Paganini最钟爱的加农炮Guarneri del Gesu为模型复制另一把琴,并将复制的琴与加农炮Guarneri del Gesu掉包,而之后Paganini演奏Vuillaume的复制琴居然没发现那不是他的加农炮Guarneri del Gesu。由此可知,Vuillaume制琴的水平之高!所以Vuillaume复制的琴在外观上及音色上都与Stradivari及Guarneri del Gesu名琴非常神似,都有非常高的艺术水平。 Hilary Hahn目前使用的就是依Paganini的加农炮Guarneri del Gesu为模型所制作的琴,这把1864年制的Vuillaume 小提琴的上一任拥有人是苏联小提琴家Samuel Lande。Samuel Lande是Hilary Hahn启蒙老师Klara Berkovich的好友。Samuel Lande的家人在他去世后开始寻找下一位适合的Vuillaume小提琴使用者,在Lande的家人听过Hilary Hahn早年的演奏会后便决定将Vuillaume小提琴送给Hilary Hahn。