"Deceptively laid back in an LA way...inventive...unconventional."
Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times
Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times
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ABOUT
Alexander Elliott Miller is a composer, guitarist, and educator based in Southern California. His compositions have been described as “deceptively laid back in an LA way… inventive…unconventional (LA Times), and “wild…unearthly…lyrical…a voice worth listening to” (San Francisco Classical Voice). Much of Miller's recent work has focused on his own instrument, the electric guitar, featuring it as a solo instrument with electronic accompaniment or in chamber ensembles. His largest projects are ANTIBODYPOLITIC, an album length project of pandemic themed works for electric guitar and analogue synthesizers, and TO….OBLIVION: Historic Landmarks Around Los Angeles, an album released in 2018. The latter work is a collection of pieces inspired by six lost landmarks in Los Angeles, each of some social or symbolic significance, scored for solo electric guitar, foley-style sound effects, live processing and video slideshow of then/now images. The album received profiles in the LAist and Long Beach Press Telegram, and a 2019 performance at Boston Court Pasadena was listed in the LA Times “8 Best Things to do this Weekend.” Miller has written and performed works for electric guitar in chamber ensemble contexts with numerous collaborators including the HOCKET Piano Duo, the Panic Duo, soprano Ariel Pisturino, and for his own duo with percussionist Ben Phelps. Other compositions by Miller for chamber ensembles, voice and electronics, have been performed by Grammy nominated Artists Vicki Ray, Tony Arnold and Aron Kallay, and ensembles including Duo Montagnard, Juventas New Music Ensemble, Earplay New Chamber Music, HOCKET, Boston New Music Initiative and the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet among others. He has received honors including a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, Earplay Donald Aird Composers Award and in 2017, and pianist Vincent Craig performed Miller’s piano solo, Actions & Resonances at Carnegie Hall. As a teacher, Miller is on the faculty of California State University Long Beach, where he teaches all levels of composition, theory and musicianship at the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music, and at Chapman University, where he developed a songwriting course which has become a requirement for all Music Technology Minors. Miller holds degrees from USC, the Eastman School of Music, and the University of Colorado at Boulder. |
Photo: Andrew Reitsma (2022)
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Featured Project
"Aftermath," composed by Alexander Elliott Miller
Alexander Elliott Miller, electric guitar
HOCKET (Sarah Gibson & Thomas Kotcheff), piano
Directed by Louis Ng
"Aftermath," composed by Alexander Elliott Miller
Alexander Elliott Miller, electric guitar
HOCKET (Sarah Gibson & Thomas Kotcheff), piano
Directed by Louis Ng