Alexander Miller
Alexander Miller joined the Grand Rapids Symphony as its Assistant Principal Oboe in 1992. Previously, he was a substitute and stage band oboist with the Metropolitan Opera in New York while he completed his Master’s degree at the Juilliard School. Mr. Miller is also a member of Ensemble Montage, a chamber group dedicated to performing unusual and challenging works of the past century. During the summer, he plays with the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz, California.
In the past, Mr. Miller has participated in the Aspen Music Festival, the National Repertory Orchestra and the Waterloo Festival. In the summer of 1993, he toured with the American-Russian Youth Orchestra throughout the United States and Russia.
Composition has also played an important role in Mr. Miller’s life. Though he never formally pursued a composition degree at Juilliard, he nevertheless made an art out of getting free lessons from the distinguished faculty. During his last two years of study, he was the only non-composition student whose pieces were allowed on the Juilliard Composer’s Forum concerts. His early student works were also performed in Boston, Detroit, the Queens College of Music, Studio 71 and the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Since arriving in Grand Rapids, Mr. Miller has written six orchestral works for the Grand Rapids Symphony: Karawitan, based on Balinese gamelan music; Fanfare, written for the opening of the 1996-1997 season; "Let Freedom Ring," for orchestra and narrator (based on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s "I have a dream" speech); into, a more conceptual work; Grand Triptych, a multi-media piece written in honor of the three recipients of the 2001 Bravo Award; and Dream Window, Mr. Miller’s most ambitious work to date, to be premiered by the Symphony in DeVos Performance Hall in November, 2002. "Let Freedom Ring" in particular has been performed by many different orchestras and has been narrated by James Earl Jones, William Warfield and Danny Glover.
Mr. Miller was born in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, but by the time he was in fourth grade, he had also lived in Mexico, Australia and Venezuela. It was in the third grade in Melbourne that his class was taken to hear a live orchestra for the first time and immediately after that, he began studying the oboe. Back in Bloomfield Hills, he attended Cranbrook Schools and studied oboe with Robert Sorton. He also moonlighted as the guitarist for the school’s jazz band. In 1986, he graduated from Cranbrook cum laude and was awarded the Dartmouth Book Award. From 1986 to 1992, he attended The Juilliard School, received both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, and studied with Elaine Douvas and John Ferrillo.
In addition to his duties with the orchestra, Mr. Miller performs with the Wünderwind Quintet, which travels regularly to elementary schools to teach students about woodwind instruments. Mr. Miller is an avid wine collector, and he resides in East Grand Rapids with his wife, Symphony Violist Mary Jane Miller.