about

Meret Koehler

I was born 1975 in Zurich, Switzerland and began my creative endeavors by picking up the violin in my early childhood. As a teenager I started playing the drumset after many years of wanting to do so. I took to my new instrument quickly and within a short time she found myself touring Switzerland with the jazz saxophonist Co Streiff. Also, I studied at the School of Audio Engineering in Zurich as well as working in a recording studio, and as a sound engineer for live performances.

I went to New York at the age of 25, enrolled in the Drummer’s Collective School of Music and got my feet wet in the New York music scene, playing funk and R&B music in clubs such as the Village Underground, Cafe Wha? and 101.

While a student at City College pursuing a double-major in Studio Art and Jazz Performance, I toured primarily the East Coast as a drummer for Imani Uzuri, Bravo Silva and Shrine for the Black Madonna. I toured with Wax Poetic in Brazil for three months. In New York, I played with groups such as the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Burnt Sugar, Bravo Silva, Inflagranti, Ten Minute Turns, Apostles, Mark Darkfeather, Hungry March Band, in venues such as Blue Note, BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), CBGB’s, Joe’s Pub, Summer Stage NY, Tonic, Galapagos Art Space, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Nublu, Brooklyn New Music Festival, Knitting Factory, Celebrate Brooklyn, The Bitter End, Southpaw and many more.

As a visual artist, I have shown fine art painting works in group shows at MoCADA, Skylight Gallery and also several single and multi-channel video art works at Monkeytown.

In May 2010 I graduated summa cum laude from the MFA Computer Art department at SVA (School of Visual Arts) in New York. My areas of study included video art, music composition, sound design, interactive media, web design, etc. My thesis work, Noise Sanitation Plant, was a live solo-drum performance, integrating custom-made drums, precomposed soundfiles and responsive computer-based graphics and video.

Since I have been working as a director, camera operator and editor on music videos,  and as a freelance video editor, motion graphics designer, compositor and sound designer for broadcast and film. I also taught motiongraphics, Photoshop and story-boarding at Brookdale College, NJ. and  gave drum lessons to children and adults.

Recently I moved from Brooklyn, NY back to Switzerland with my husband and two daughters. Currently I am freelancing in the media industry and teach Communication Design, Digital Film and Animation at iBW, Höhere Fachschule, Südostschweiz.