Cassandra Miller


Cassandra Miller is a Canadian experimental composer currently based in London, England. Her work is known for frequently utilising the process of transcription of a variety of pre-existing pieces of music.
She has been widely commissioned by international orchestras, ensembles and soloists, and has won the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music twice, in 2016 and in 2011.
Since 2018 she has been Professor of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, UK.

Education

Miller studied with Christopher Butterfield at the University of Victoria and at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague with Richard Ayres and Yannis Kyriakides before studying privately with Michael Finnissy in 2012.
Miller returned to academic research in 2014, as a PhD candidate at the University of Huddersfield, supervised by Dr Bryn Harrison and supported by the Jonathan Harvey Scholarship.

Career

Miller's music has been commissioned and performed by orchestras including BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. Ensembles who have performed her work include EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble, the London Sinfonietta, I Musici de Montréal, Ensemble Plus-Minus, Ensemble contemporain de Montréal, and Continuum Contemporary Music.
She has ongoing artistic relationships with the soprano Juliet Fraser and the Canadian string quartet Quatour Bozzini, for whom she wrote the pieces About Bach, Leaving, Warblework and Just So. These four works were released as an album by the label Another Timbre in 2018, alongside a second album of her orchestra and ensemble music.
From 2010 to 2013, Miller also was artistic director of the concert series "Innovations en concert" in Montreal. Miller moved to London to take up the post of Associate Head of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in September 2018.

Use of transcription

Miller often bases her work on pre-existing music, for example: a computer transcription of Kurt Cobain singing the folk song "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?", in For Mira, written for violinist Mira Benjamin, a recording of Maria Callas singing "Vissi d’arte" from Puccini's opera Tosca in Bel Canto, and a recording of an anonymous mbira player from Mozambique in Philip the Wanderer.
Her work takes these transcriptions as starting points, investigating her response to the music through processes of repetition and looping. Often the source material is unrecognisable in Miller’s finished works.
Her works employ musical notation, but also sometimes recordings of the source music, which performers learn by memory, such as a recording of the blues singer Maria Muldaur, which Miller uses in her piece Guide.

Selected works