Cornelius Meister is a German conductor and pianist. His father, Konrad Meister, is a pianist and professor of piano at the Musikhochschule Hannover. His mother is also a piano teacher. His half-brother, Rudolf Meister, is also a pianist and is Rector of the Musikhochschule Mannheim. Meister studied piano and conducting at the Hochschule f�r Musik und Theater Hannover. Besides his father, his teachers in Hannover included Martin Brauss and Eiji Oue. Meister also studied music at the Salzburg Mozarteum, with such teachers as Dennis Russell Davies and Karl Kamper. He was a prize winner at the 1996 Southwest German Chamber Music Competition, a winner of the Radeberger Award and the Audience Award at the 1998 Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, and a recipient in 2000 of a prize from the Deutscher Musikwettbewerb. From 2001 to 2002, Meister was an assistant conductor at the Theater Erfurt. He has also worked as a Kapellmeister at the Staatsoper Hannover. In September 2005, he became Generalmusikdirektor of Heidelberg, then the youngest general music director of Germany. In October 2008, he extended his Heidelberg contract through 2012, at which time his Heidelberg tenure concluded. 

February 23rd, 1980 in Hanover (Age 44)