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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.
Classical Discoveries Interview
About the Composer
TIMOTHY LEE MILLER is an American composer, arranger, orchestrator, and publisher of contemporary concert music for chamber ensembles, orchestra, wind ensemble, chorus, and voice, as well as jazz music for big band and small combo ensembles. He has earned degrees from the University of Tennessee (BS Music Ed, 1984), the University of Miami (MM Media Writing and Production, 1990), and Vermont College of Fine Arts (MFA Composition, 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. He has received numerous commissions and awards, including ASCAP awards from 2012 through 2020. His works have been performed throughout the US, Europe, Russia, and China by the American Modern Ensemble, American Modern Orchestra, St. Andrews New Music Ensemble, Millennium Symphony Orchestra, Moravian Philharmonia, Athens Philharmonia Orchestra, Klang String Quartet, Sunderman Wind Quintet, Vermont Jazz Ensemble, Diane Moser's Composers Big Band, Ikerere, and others. His music is recorded on ERMMedia, Novana Records, Ansonica Records, and Phoenix Classics, and distributed by Subito Music, Inc., and J.W. Pepper.
Miller has received numerous commissions, special recognitions and awards. 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 most recent recognition is a semi-finalist award in 2018 for his Dappled light 'mid mountains gleams for saxophone quartet. 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. He was commissioned in 2017 by the Philadelphia-based ensemble illumine for an art song for mezzo-soprano, violin and piano, for which he delivered The House With Nobody In It based on the poem by Joyce Kilmer. In 2018 he was a composition fellow at the inaugural season of the Mostly Modern Festival where he premiered When leaves begin to fall for chamber sextet, which was dedicated to mother who passed away in February 2018. His chamber sextet version of Something More was premiered at the 2019 Mostly Modern Festival, and it was recently awarded with 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 several jazz works with 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 along-side music by the other seven composers. In 2018, he released SOMETHING MORE: The Jazz Music of Timothy Lee Miller, his solo debut jazz CD through PARMA Recordings
In October 2021, Miller's chamber opera The Bird Lady was presented on a 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. A full orchestral production of the opera is being planned for Spring 2022. For more information, please visit the Opera tab above, or click HERE. The opera is a setting of Germaine Shames' libretto, with additional lyrics by Linda Marcus and Julie I. Meyers.