ROBERT MEALY
74 East 7th Street E1
New York, NY 10003
212.388.9511
remealy@post.harvard.edu
One of America’s leading baroque violinists, Robert Mealy has been praised for his “imagination, taste, subtlety, and daring” by the Boston Globe; the New Yorker recently called him “New York’s world-class early music violinist.” He has recorded over 50 CDs of early music on most major labels, ranging from Hildegard of Bingen with Sequentia, to Renaissance consorts with the Boston Camerata, to Rameau operas with Les Arts Florissants. At home in New York, he is a frequent leader and soloist with the New York Collegium, Early Music New York, the Clarion Society, and the ARTEK early music ensemble.
Mr. Mealy began exploring early music in high school, first with the collegium of UC Berkeley and then at the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied harpsichord and baroque violin. While still an undergraduate at Harvard College, he was asked to join the distinguished Canadian baroque orchestra Tafelmusik. Since then, he has recorded and toured with many early music ensembles both here and in Europe, including (from early to late) Sequentia, Ensemble Project Ars Nova, Medieval Strings, the Newberry Consort, the Folger Consort, Tragicomedia, Les Arts Florissants, La Fontegara (Mexico), the Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal, Seattle Baroque, Boston Baroque, and the Handel and Haydn Society. He has toured with the Mark Morris Dance Company and accompanied Renée Fleming on the David Letterman Show.
In 2004 Mr. Mealy was appointed concertmaster of the internationally-acclaimed Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, and led them in their recent recording of Lully’s Thésée, as well as their Grammy-nominated recording of Conradi’s Ariadne, and the modern premiere of Mattheson’s Boris Godenouw. The Boston Phoenix remarked of the Boris production that “the most exceptional music came from the pit. Concertmaster Robert Mealy played more music than anyone onstage or off, every measure of it with erudition and compelling energy.”
He regularly appears at international music festivals from Berkeley to Belgrade, and from Melbourne to Versailles. A devoted chamber musician, he is a member of the celebrated Renaissance violin band The King's Noyse, which records for harmonia mundi usa, and the new 17c ensemble Spiritus Collective. He served for over a decade as an instrumental soloist and leader with the Boston Camerata. Through his interest in earlier repertories, he co-founded the medieval ensemble Fortune’s Wheel, which has appeared at early music festivals throughout the Americas, and at the Cloisters and the Frick Museum here in New York.
A keen scholar as well as a performer, Mr. Mealy has lectured and taught historical performance techniques at Columbia, Brown, Rutgers, Oberlin, and U.C. Berkeley. He was recently appointed Lecturer at Yale University, where he is director of the Yale Collegium; he also directs the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra. For his work with both institutions, he received Early Music America’s Binkley Award in 2004 for outstanding teaching and scholarship. Mr. Mealy served for several years as the Hogwood Fellow of the Handel and Haydn Society, to advise on scholarship and performance, and he regularly teaches historical improvisation and technique at workshops across North America.
Recent projects include leading the Phoenix Symphony, appearing with Paul O’Dette at the Resonanz Festival in Vienna, his third annual solo appearance at the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder, and serving as concertmaster and soloist in Jonathan Miller’s staged Matthew Passion at BAM.
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