Mela Meierhans was born in 1961 in Zug, Switzerland. She received her most impactful artistic impulses at home, especially in the field of contemporary music and abstract painting. As a composer, Meierhans considers herself to be an autodidact. Her works combine complexity and openness. Interdisciplinary collaboration in music, dance, film, performance, theater, installation, and architecture is reflected in her interactive scores.
From 1998–2000 she worked as a composer in residence at the electronic studio of the music conservatory in Basel, Switzerland. Meierhans has received numerous honors and rewards for her compositional output, including the “Werkpreis” for composition of the City and Canton of Zug (1990 and 1993), the “Förderpreis” of the Canton of Zug (1997), and the “Anerkennungspreis” of the City of Lucerne (2001). In 2000 she was composer in residence at the basel sinfonietta, and she spent 2008 as composer in residence in Cairo.
Meierhans has received many commissions, including from MaerzMusik Berlin, the Theaterfabrik Gera, the State Opera of Hanover, the Lucerne Festival, the Gare du Nord, Basel, the Symphony Orchestra of Basel, and other orchestras, both domestically and abroad.
In 2007 Meierhans joined forces with several classical musicians and co-founded the ensemble dialogue, a consortium of musicians who play not only traditional Swiss folk music instruments, but who also excel at improvisation. Depending on the nature of each project, the consortium appears in differing constellations.
Mela Meierhans lives in Berlin and Buckow/Brandenburg.