Norbert Meyn

Diplom Gesang (HfM Weimar), LGSM, FHEA, FRCM

Research & Knowledge Exchange Fellow

Norbert Meyn is a singer, vocal and language coach and researcher.

At the Royal College of Music he teaches repertoire classes (German Lieder) and diction for singers, coaches chamber music and devises performance and research projects. He has also been involved in Masters and PhD supervision.

Born in Weimar in Germany, Norbert has been living in the UK since 1997. After graduating from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama he performed all over the world, often with vocal ensembles including the New London Consort, The Choir of the Enlightenment and London Voices. As a soloist he has sung with conductors such as Roger Norrington, Simon Halsey, Howard Arman and John Eliot Gardiner and with companies including The Opera Group, Pavilion Opera and The Continuum Ensemble. For 15 years he was a member of the extra chorus of the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. He continues to perform recital and cabaret programmes.

Norbert has been designing and leading a range of practice-based research projects since 2004. His research interests are in the areas of music and migration, 19th and 20th century song and vocal pedagogy. From 2019-2023 Norbert served as Principal Investigator of the interdisciplinary AHRC project Music Migration & Mobility. Research outputs include academic articles, research-based performances and recordings, educational videos for singers, recordings, German pronunciation guides for singers. He is director of Ensemble Émigré.

Norbert is also much in demand as a vocal and language coach for leading choirs and opera companies including the London Symphony Chorus, the BBC Singers, the Bergen Philharmonic Choir, the Netherlands Radio Choir, the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus, the Halle Choir in Manchester, the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, Scottish Chamber Orchestra Chorus and the choir of Trinity College Cambridge. He has also worked as language coach for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Holland Park Opera, Garsington Opera, the Bolshoi Opera, Hyperion Records, Harmonia Mundi and Orfeó Català Barcelona.

Selected publications

Articles

Meyn N, Grosch N, & Adey P (2023), Foregrounding mobility rather than belonging: a conceptual framework for engaging with music shaped by transnational migration, Acta Musicologica, 95(1), 4-20 [LINK].

Meyn N (2023), Encounters with the émigré experience: discovering the chamber music and songs of Peter Gellhorn, 'Music and Exile: from 1933 to the Present Day' Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 22, 217-236 [DOI].

Meyn N (2021), ‘Music, Migration and Mobility’: an ongoing research project at the Royal College of Music, Music & Practice, 9 [DOI].

Meyn N (2020), Prince Albert and Anglo-German connections in 19th-century music. Angermion: Yearbook for Anglo-German Literary Criticism, Intellectual History and Cultural Transfers, 13(1), 197-212 [DOI].

Exhibition

Meyn N & Holden M (2023), Music, Migration, and Mobility: The Story of Émigré Musicians from Nazi Europe in Britain, Exhibition held in the RCM Museum 17 January - 21 May 2023 [LINK].

Online resource

Meyn N (2023), Online resource: Music, Migration and Mobility [LINK].

Recordings

Meyn N, Pearson IE, Sun E & Driver D (2021), Robert Kahn: Leaves from the Tree of life, Rubicon Classics RCD1040 [LINK].

Meyn N & Charlston T (2014), CPE Bach: Spiritual Songs, Toccata Classics TOCC0248 [LINK].

Watch Norbert's interview with Dame Janet Baker Visit website

Faculties / departments: Vocal Studies, Research