Cassandra Miller | Composition Forum

In this Composition Forum, Cassandra Miller will talk about Transformative mimicry: uncontrolled singing as a tool for composing.

FREE and Open to the Public | In Person + Zoom

Cassandra Miller is a Canadian-British composer living in London. Her composition methods incorporate a unique practice of meditation-based uncontrolled singing to learn about melody and repetition from a deep-tissue perspective. 

She’ll be speaking about this “automatic singing” method, and about how she has used it in combination with notated scores in recent works—including Traveller Song (released by Black Truffle) and her viola concerto I cannot love without trembling (performed by orchestras in Belgium, Germany, Scotland, and at the BBC Proms in England).

“Music this uncalculatedly beautiful leaves you almost desperate with gratitude”, wrote Alex Ross of her work in The New Yorker. Premiered at the 2015 Tectonics Festival by Charles Curtis with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov, Miller’s Duet for Cello and Orchestra was hailed as one of the ‘best classical music works of the 21st century’ by The Guardian. Miller studied at the University of Victoria (Christopher Butterfield) and the Royal Conservatory of the Hague (Richard Ayres and Yannis Kyriakides), privately with Michael Finnissy, and holds a doctorate from the University of Huddersfield (Bryn Harrison). From 2018 to 2020 Miller was Associate Head of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, leading the undergraduate programme. Her scores are published by Faber Music. She is currently visiting Stanford for three months as lecturer.