Lavinia Meijer

Harpist Lavinia Meijer has collected extensive honors and widespread recognition around the world. Her musical range spans crossover projects and contemporary pieces alongside the standard harp repertoire, positioning her as a leading exponent of Philip Glass’s compositions.

Born in South Korea in 1983, Meijer moved to the Netherlands at age two, where adoptive parents raised her. She entered the young artists’ program at the Utrecht Conservatory at eleven and completed her studies there with distinction in 2003 before earning a master’s degree from the Amsterdam Conservatory in 2005. Extensive international touring has taken her across continents with prominent ensembles such as the Residentie Orkest, the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Several recordings appeared on the Channel Classics imprint, among them the 2004 collection 1685 devoted to works by Handel, Bach, and Scarlatti. A Borletti-Buitoni Trust fellowship arrived in 2007, frequently viewed as a launchpad for major global careers, and in 2009 she received the Dutch Music Prize, one of the country’s highest musical distinctions. The 2012 release Metamorphosis/The Hours presented music by Philip Glass and earned gold certification for classical repertoire from the Dutch Association of Producers and Importers of Video & Audio Media. She has also explored unconventional performance formats, presenting unaccompanied recitals in candlelit spaces.

After joining Sony Classical and issuing a 2014 album of works by crossover composer Ludovico Einaudi, Meijer gained recognition as one of the globe’s most prominent harpists. Her subsequent recording Voyage blended familiar classical pieces with selections from Yann Tiersen’s score for the film Amélie. The 2015 live album In Concert highlighted her engagement with both new compositions and popular idioms. In 2017 she revisited Glass on The Glass Effect, pairing his music with pieces by younger creators—including rock musician Bryce Dessner—who sometimes operated outside classical traditions; Meijer contributed her own harp arrangements of excerpts from Glass’s Koyaanisqatsi. A third Glass project, Still Life: A Tribute to Philip Glass, appeared in 2019 in collaboration with Maud Geffray. The following year she featured on the album Peaceful Choir: The New Sound of Choral Music. Recent Sony Classical releases include the 2024 disc Winter.