René Urs Meyer had a brief career as a music copyist before the advent of music notation software. Clients ranged from college marching bands to major publishers of scores and sheet music. This came about when he brought one of his hand copied arrangements to the brass ensemble at the University of Massachusetts, where he was studying plant genetics as a graduate student. They weren't interested in the score but immediately put him to work copying parts. Since then, he has created more than 200 original compositions for soloists and assorted ensembles, many of which are now in a special collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.