Björn Meyer

Björn Meyer is a Swedish bassist and composer born in 1965 just outside Stockholm, now based in Switzerland since 1996, who's totally redefined what the electric bass can do across jazz, folk, ambient, and world music vibes. He kicked off with piano as a kid, trumpet in youth school, boys' choir singing, and guitar in punk and garage bands, but at 18, a jam session hooked him on bass—ditching his computer science and physics studies to go pro in 1989, a "year off" that's lasted decades. He's collaborated with legends like Tunisian oud master Anouar Brahem on ECM albums, spent over a decade shaping "Zen funk" in Nik Bärtsch's Ronin, and co-founded outfits like Bazar Blå with nyckelharpa player Johan Hedin (pushing modern Swedish folk for 30+ years), the intercultural Garden of Silence with Persian harpist Asita Hamidi, and trios like Amiira and NEN.

Meyer's solo ECM debut *Provenance* dropped in 2017, showcasing his innovative bass techniques and sonic experiments, earning him the Swiss Music Prize in 2019 and Canton Bern Music Prize in 2018—he's all about blending electric grit with acoustic spaces, folklore, minimalism, and global sounds in releases like *Gravity*, *Magnetique*, and *Garden of Silence*. A tinkerer at heart, he mods instruments, geeks out on electronics, and guests at conservatories while engineering for labels like Hermes Records.