Age ain’t nothin’ but a number for Jared Miller, who will become the Victoria Symphony’s youngest composer-in-residence in a matter of weeks.
The 25-year-old assumes the position June 1, following Michael Oesterle’s three-year term.
“I don’t look at [age] as something that will necessarily add something or put challenges in my life. Ultimately, it’s just about writing the best music I can write,” Miller said on the phone from New York.
To be fair, Miller has accomplished more than most in his quarter century. The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra commissioned his piece 2010 Traffic Jam as part of its Olympic year presentations. Pianist Ang Li debuted his composition Souvenirs d’Europe at Carnegie Hall in 2011. And Flickering Images premièred at the Lincoln Centre after winning the 2011/2012 Juilliard Orchestra Competition.
During his tenure, Miller will travel between Victoria and New York, where he’ll continue working on his doctorate degree at the Juilliard School under the guidance of Oscar-winning composer John Corigliano, whom he called a “generous teacher.”
One of the things that attracted him to Victoria were the outreach and education opportunities offered through the symphony, he said.
“I feel it’s my responsibility, in a sense, to engage and educate the next generation of classical listeners,” he said. “The fear is that there won’t be any more classical listeners in coming generations, but I still believe it’s very relevant. I believe that people still really connect with this type of music and I believe in both classical and new music as a way to educate people.”
The challenge has to do with exposure, he said, rather than convincing people that it’s a worthy artform.
“If you play for them the right music, and play it in the right way, people are engaged,” he said.
Miller was born in Los Angeles and raised in Burnaby by a family who appreciated the arts. His mother is the principal of an arts elementary school and his father works at the B.C. Lions Society for Children with Disabilities. They now live in Squamish. Despite having a “contrasting” musical palate, even his older brother has supported him, enduring up to six hours per day of practice.
Miller’s earlier memory of classical music is watching Disney’s Fantasia regularly. When he saw Amadeus at age seven, he realized for the first time that someone actually wrote music for the film and made a living from it.
Although Miller also plays the piano, he said he gets something different from writing music.
“It’s a lot less predictable,” he said.
As a performer, some things can happen during a live performance that you don’t anticipate. But as a composer, you’re watching your creation come to life with different elements of surprise.
“Some truly amazing things have been brought out of the music by performers, but there’s also the fact that you’re working on something that you’re not actually hearing in real time until the rehearsal process, which is usually right before the concert,” he said. “That type of freshness and variety is very appealing as a composer.”
Miller, who is not related to maestra Tania Miller, reflected on his goals for his term with the Victoria Symphony. It’s set at two years with an option for a third.
“As a composer, I have a varied palate of sound worlds and emotional worlds that I like to explore. Some of my works are very humorous and off-the-wall. Others are very sentimental. Others are very dark and serious,” he said.
“I guess throughout my residency, one thing that I’d really like to master is the ability to bring all these contrasting emotional worlds to my orchestral output, to be able to express them with the orchestra. …And of course, to be honest in the music that I write.”