Gustav Meier

Gustav Meier (13 August 1929 – 26 May 2016) was a Swiss-born conductor and director of the Orchestra Conducting Program at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. He was also Music Director of the Greater Bridgeport Symphony Orchestra in Connecticut, for more than 40 years (1972–2013).

Gustav Meier has earned international acclaim as both an exceptional conductor and a truly gifted teacher. After graduating from the Zurich Conservatory, the Swiss-born conductor continued his studies at the Academia Chigiana Siena. He began his career at the Lucerne Opera, followed by several seasons at the Vienna Chamber Opera and the Zurich Opera. In this country his opera talents were quickly recognized, as he was soon conducting at the New York, Santa Fe, Miami, Minnesota, San Francisco Operas and others.

He has led orchestras around the globe including appearances with the Zurich Tonhalle, São Paulo, China National, Pittsburgh, Colorado and Alabama Symphony Orchestras; New York City, Santa Fe, Miami, San Francisco, Zurich, and Minnesota Opera Companies; and the Budapest and Vienna State Opera Orchestras. His innovative artistic direction has earned Meier critical praises in this country and abroad. Productions which received nationwide coverage included Stravinsky Rake's Progress in which he collaborated with the film director Rober Altman (M.A.S.H., Nashville, The Players), William Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and Experience, which he conducted in Ann Arbor (American premiere) and at Chicago's Grant Park, and André Previn's All Good Boys Deserve Favour, a play by Tom Stoppard set for actors and symphony orchestra.

Meier received his musical diploma from the Zurich Conservatory, Switzerland. He has served on the faculties of Yale University (1960–1973) where he became the youngest full-time professor in the school's history, the Eastman School of Music (1973–1976), and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (1976–1995). He has also served on the faculty of the Tanglewood Music Center from 1980 to 1996 where he spent the summers overseeing Tanglewood's prestigious Conducting Seminar. The program selected the "absolute cream" of international students according to André Previn, a frequent guest in Meier's classes, along with the late Leonard Bernstein. Meier's original connection with Tanglewood dates to 1957 and 1958 when he himself was chosen as a conducting fellow and won top prizes. Meier was a member of one of the most remarkable conducting classes in the Tanglewood Music Center's history, one that included Claudio Abbado, Zubin Mehta and David Zinman. He regularly taught conducting master classes across North America, Europe and Asia.

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