Classical Discoveries Interview
Links
On August 17, 2016 I was interviewed by Marvin Rosen on his popular and long-running weekly radio series CLASSICAL DISCOVERIES. Click on the links below to hear the full interview, which was broadcast live on WPRB-FM on the campus of Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey.
About the Composer
TIMOTHY LEE MILLER (b. 1961) is an American composer, arranger, orchestrator, and publisher of unique contemporary concert music and has written more than 200 works for orchestra, wind ensemble, various chamber ensembles, opera, chorus, and voice, as well as jazz music for big bands and small combos. He holds degrees from the University of Tennessee (BS, 1984), the University of Miami (MM, 1990), and Vermont College of Fine Arts (MFA, 2013). His principal composition teachers have been John Anthony Lennon, James Progris, Tamar Diesendruck, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Andy Jaffe, John Fitz Rogers, and Roger Zahab. His music has been performed throughout the US, Europe, Russia, and China by the London Symphony Orchestra, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Millennium Symphony Orchestra, Moravian Philharmonia, Athens Philharmonia Orchestra, American Modern Orchestra, American Modern Ensemble, Choristi Sanctiandree and St. Andrews New Music Ensemble, C4: Choral Composers Conductors Collective, Klang Quartet, Namaste Clarinet Ensemble, Sunderman Wind Quintet, Cobalt Saxophone Quartet, Callithumpian Consort, Vermont Jazz Ensemble, Diane Moser's Composers Big Band, Ikerere, and others. His music is recorded on ERMMedia, Ansonica Records, Navona Records, and Phoenix Classics.
Miller has received numerous commissions, special recognitions, and awards throughout his career. His Kid's Play: A Fun Suite for Orchestra was awarded a Distinguished and Special Mention at the 2009 IBLA Grand Prize Competition in Ragusa, Italy. His six-part a cappella setting of the Madison Cawein poem The Garden of Dreams was a winner in the International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition 2011, while his choral setting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem The Day Is Done was a finalist in the same competition. He is a multi-year award winner with The American Prize for Excellence in Composition. His Divinitus for chamber sextet was a finalist in the 2014 American Prize for Excellence in Composition, and his choral works Jubilate Deo and The Garden of Dreams were both semi-finalists in the 2015 American Prize. In 2016, his String Quartet No. 3 was named a semi-finalist, and his 224 slices of pi for flute, cello, piano, and percussion was recognized as a Finalist-Honorable Mention. His Dappled light 'mid mountains gleams for saxophone quartet was recognized as a semi-finalist in 2018. In 2015 he was a Composition Fellow at the nief-norf Summer Festival for Contemporary Music in Knoxville, Tennessee, and in 2017 he was selected as a Composition Fellow in the Wyoming Festival–New Music in the Mountains held in Grand Teton National Park. In 2018 he was a composition fellow at the inaugural season of the Mostly Modern Festival in Saratoga Springs, New York where he premiered When leaves begin to fall for chamber sextet, which describes the mental decline a patient with Parkinson's related dementia experiences. The work was dedicated to his mother who passed away of the disease in February 2018. His chamber sextet Something More was premiered at the 2019 Mostly Modern Festival and was recently awarded third place in the 2020 American Prize.
In November 2015, Miller was one of eight composers who traveled with PARMA Recordings to Havana, Cuba to record with local musicians in Havana under the People-to-People humanitarian program. Two of his big band jazz charts, Hot Miami Nights and On An Autumn Day, were recorded by the band Ikerere, and then released on the two-disc set ABRAZO: The Havana Sessions. In 2018, he released SOMETHING MORE: The Jazz Music of Timothy Lee Miller, his solo debut jazz album through PARMA Recordings, an album of eight original compositions that explore the unique relationships the composer has with family members. Expanding upon something as simple as a photograph or a memory, Miller's noir-influenced jazz expands his reflections beyond words, and instead creates stories through moods.
In October 2021, Miller's chamber opera The Bird Lady was presented on a semi-staged preview showcase by OperAvant, Inc. at Opera America's National Opera Center in New York City. The production featured a semi-staged piano-vocal reduction of Act I, which was directed by Carrie Wesolowski and conducted by Kevin Scott. The three-character cast included Christina Kay, soprano, as Annabelle, Thomas Walters, tenor, as Marcus, and Christopher Fistonich, baritone, as Percy. The opera is a setting of Germaine Shames' libretto, with additional lyrics by Linda G. Marcus and Julie I. Meyers.
