Please direct questions to: contact@bethmeyersmusic.com

Violist/multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, arranger and recording artist, Beth Meyers was founding member of the flute/viola/harp trio, janus, whose debut album i am not (New Amsterdam Records 2010) was called “gorgeously subtle” (NPR’s Studio 360). Through their more than 14 years of collaboration and touring, janus commissioned over one hundred new works for the trio repertoire. The group’s final album Book Of Memory (New Focus Recordings 2016) features the music of Paul Lansky and Jason Treuting. As a chamber musician, Beth has also performed and recorded with groups including Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble ACJW, ACME Ensemble, Argento, Da Capo Chamber Players, Ensemble Signal, Far Rockaway Chamber Music, Hotel Elefant, IPSE Ensemble, the Knights, Kronos Quartet, Meredith Monk Ensemble, Nexus Percussion, Sō Percussion, Steve Reich and Musicians, and the Ying Quartet. 

Beth is committed to new sounds and pushing the boundaries of contemporary music. In addition to her experience working under the baton of Pierre Boulez with the Lucerne Festival Academy (2005/2006), she has also performed with former Arditti String Quartet and Ensemble InterContemporain violist, Garth Knox. In 2009, alongside the NY chapter of the American Viola Society, Beth presented Garth for the first time in the US and his groundbreaking piece, ‘Viola Spaces’. As a performer, she is also interested in the intersection of free improvisation and new music and synthesizes her experience as a graduate of the School for Improvisational Music (Ralph Alessi/Peter Epstein 2001). More recently, Beth co-produced and performed (viola/voice/ electric guitar/banjo/spoken word) a double vinyl of original music by Jason Treuting called ‘Go Placidly With Haste’ with collaborative tracks from various artists including Angélica Negrón, Iarla Ó Lionáird, Sam Amidon and members of Sō Percussion. This project spanned just over 6 years beginning at a Yellow Barn artist retreat, making its way to Berlin at the PEOPLE Festival (2018) and culminating at Brooklyn’s Shapeshifter Lab for the Cantaloupe Records album release in Spring 2024. 

As an orchestral violist, Beth performs regularly with her hometown group, the Princeton Symphony Orchestra. Over the years, she has performed with orchestras including the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra, Erie Philharmonic, Key West Symphony, New York Pops, Richmond Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, and the Wordless Music Orchestra. She performed at the Aspen Music Festival, the National Repertory Orchestra, and the Lucerne Festival Academy where she worked under conductors including Marin Alsop, Joann Falletta, David Robertson and Leonard Slatkin. In 2016, Beth joined alumni of the Lucerne Festival Academy in a memorial concert for Pierre Boulez at the KKL in Lucerne, Switzerland for a moving performance of ‘Rite of Spring’. As a Broadway musician, she held the viola chair at Wicked Broadway from 2014-2016 after acting as substitute for nine years prior. Her first “regular chair" was Rocky (2014) which she held for its entirety.Beth has also served as substitute viola for Carousel, Cinderella, Ghost, Matilda and currently Hamilton. 

As an Institute for Music Leadership Orchestral Fellow during her time at the Eastman School of Music, she performed and recorded regularly with the Rochester Philharmonic. Internships in the administrative offices of Education and Outreach and the Office of Special Events at the RPO led to a year-long appointment as Program Associate of Orchestral Performance and Community Outreach at the Manhattan School of Music. Further accolades include being selected as one of two Catherine Filene Shouse Arts Leadership Fellows to attend the Mellon Foundation’s “Orchestra Forum,” working alongside musicians and administrators of such organizations as the Cleveland Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s to examine the health of American symphony orchestras. 

After hearing the sound of a Norwegian hardingfele for the first time in early 2002, she later joined forces with the performer and composer, Dan Trueman and is wife and bandmate, Monica Mugan, becoming a founding member of the quirky “folk-prog” band, QQQ (with Dan on hardanger fiddle, Monica on acoustic guitar and Jason Treuting on drums). QQQ’s debut album, Unpacking the Trailer (New Amsterdam Records 2009) was hailed “a bold statement of purpose disguised as an unpretentious lark” by Time Out New York. In 2017 she released Just Sit So with her duo project, Damsel (with vocalist/guitarist, Monica Mugan), featuring the singer-songwriting team’s original compositions for voice, viola, guitar, ukulele, and banjo. Damsel’s sophomore album, New To You was released in 2021 and the band celebrated its release with a delayed tour of Ireland in 2023. Damsel has performed at venues including the Unruly Sounds Festival, LPR, Rockwood Music Hall, Barbés, Pete’s Candy Store, the Irish Arts Center for Muldoon’s Picnic, Levis’ Corner House, DeBarra’s Folk Club, Club Passim and Whelan’s. One of the band’s highlights was opening for Rozi Plain at Phil Grime’s in Waterford, IE. The duo will celebrate their 10 year anniversary in 2024 by returning to Ireland in August 2024 to perform at Fuddle Fest and Another Love Story. 

Beth’s passion for singing was honed early in her career when she began singing the music of Steve Reich. Beth’s vocals are featured on Steve Reich: Tehillim / The Desert Music (Cantaloupe Records 2002), Drumming Live with Steve Reich and Sō Percussion at Le Poisson Rouge (Dog W/A Bone 2016), Steve Reich, Nexus, Sō Percussion (2021) and a Four/Ten Media video of Steve Reich: Drumming performed by ‘Nexus, Sō Percussion and Friends’ which can be found on the ‘Drumming at 50’ website. Beth has also recorded and performed backing vocals for artists including Arone Dyer, Caroline Shaw, Clare Muldaur, Lisa Hannigan, Mariam Wallington, Shara Nova, and Kate Stables (TITK). 

She is a regular sidewoman for the anti-folk Warner Bros. artist, Regina Spektor and has also shared the stage and/or recorded with artists including Adele, Antony and the Johnsons, Beirut, Björk, Cassandra Wilson, Chris Cornell, Chris Stapleton, Chromeo, Dan Deacon, Due Lipa, Eryka Badu, Frank Ocean, Jade Bird, Local Natives, Matmos, Meredith Monk, The National, The Roots, This is the Kit, and Sufjan Stevens. 

As a composer/arranger, Beth collaborated with composer/librettist, Rebecca Comerford and composer, Jason Treuting to co-write the multigenerational opera, ‘The Nightingale And The Tower’ (commissioned by the Ojai Youth Opera, 2019). The same year, she also worked closely with Regina Spektor to arrange music and MD for her Broadway limited run, ‘Regina Spektor on Broadway’ at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater as well as her appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers. In the pre-pandemic months, she collaborated with choreographer, Emma Sandall to compose and arrange the music for ‘This Wrestling Place’, a theatrical adaptation of “Motherhood” by Sheila Heti which was scheduled to premier at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival before covid hit. In her role as producer, Beth curated the U.S. premier of former Arditti String Quartet member, Garth Knox in Brooklyn (2006) and more recently coordinated the ‘Unremembered’ recording project for Schirmer composer, Sarah Kirkland Snider (New Amsterdam Records 2015). Most recently, Beth wore multiple hats as producer/arranger for Burkina Faso’s choreographer and composer, Olivier Tarpaga, in his premier of ‘Be Kūnū’ with Dafra Kura Band and the Princeton University Orchestra. Beth joined this project early in its evolution and, alongside Olivier, Bouboucar Djiga, and Seydou Koïta, arranged/transcribed/ orchestrated the 30-minute suite of music for full orchestra. The Be Kūnū project is a groundbreaking, first of its kind work and was conceived by Olivier Tarpaga and the director of PUO, Michael Pratt in response to the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement across the globe: West African music performed on ancient Mandingo string instruments by the Dafra Kura Band and accompanied by a classical symphony orchestra. Upcoming projects include a string quartet arrangement of Norwegian pop star, Sondre Lerch’s ‘Two Way Monologue’ at Le Poisson Rouge in celebration of the album’s 20th anniversary. 

Beth is a graduate of the University of Rochester (BA English ’00) and Eastman School of Music (BM ’00, MM ’02) where she studied with George Taylor. Her principal teachers also include John Graham (Aspen Music Festival), Garth Knox (Ensemble InterContemporain), and Melissa Micciche (Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra). Her vocal mentors include Daisy Press and Theo Bleckmann. Beth is currently an adjunct faculty member at Rider University where she teaches Music for Dance. She plays a Möes and Möes viola and a Mike Ramsey banjo.

-Beth