Gustav Meier (13 August 1929 – 26 May 2016)[1] was a Swiss-born conductor and director of the Orchestra Conducting Program at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.
[citation needed] After graduating from the Zurich Conservatory, Meier continued his studies at the Vienna Music Academy, later renamed as the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien) where he studied with the legendary teacher, Hans Swarowsky.
Productions which received nationwide coverage included Stravinsky's Rake's Progress in which he collaborated with the film director Robert 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.
The program selected the "absolute cream" of international students according to André Previn, a frequent guest in Meier's classes, along with Leonard Bernstein.
He 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.
Conducting workshops took him to all corners of the world, such as Vancouver, Canada, Cabrillo, California, New York City, Beijing, Prague, and Sofia, Bulgaria.
Growing up in neutral Switzerland during Hitler’s ascendancy and WWII had a profound influence on him as he, his family and many Swiss had a perpetual sense that a German invasion was imminent.
At the age of five, his mother gave him a trumpet and taught him to play “Silent Night” as a Christmas gift to his father, August Meier, a factory foreman who was home for the holidays after working as he often did in neighboring countries for Brown Boveri.
Upon his death, Gustav was survived by his wife Emy Meier, his son Dani (Dawn), daughters Eva, Angy and Pam (Gary), and grandchildren Alicia Landon, Nora Andermeier (Arthur), Sean Atamian, Annarose Atamian, Ezra Andermeier, Nika Field and Dain Field.