"Deceptively laid back in an LA way...inventive...unconventional."
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, 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.  
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PRESS
"Deceptively laid back...inventive...unconventional." 
- Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times

"Wild...unearthly...lyrical...a voice worth listening to." 
- Jerry Kuderna, San Francisco Classical Voice

"...illustrates the evocative power and emotional punch that can result when a composer goes all in..."
- Paul Muller, Sequenza21

"...a plush and tightly constructed piece that is filled with colorful imagery...shimmered like moonlight on water." 
- Aaron Keebaugh, Boston Classical Review

"Beautiful...quirky...ingeniously wrought gestures, as much timbral as melodic....it's the kind of music that -- now euphonious/now jarring, now calm/now flighty -- is exciting to live in."
- Damjan Rakonjac, The Artificialist 
Sequenza 21: Aron Kallay, Beyond 12, Volume 2, 2-1-21
San Francisco Classical Voice: Catching Up With HOCKET, 9-25-20
San Francisco Classical Voice: What 2020 Sounds Like, in 45-Second Bits, 7-14-20
Los Angeles Times: 8 Best Things To Do In LA, 10-24-19
LAist: 36 Awesome Events in Southern California This Weekend, 10-24-19
Long Beach Press Telegram: This guitarist wants you to hear the history of Anaheim, Long Beach and Los Angeles 11-3-18
LAist: This Electric Guitar Album Puts You Inside 6 LA-Area Landmarks That Are Long Gone, 10-17-18
New Classic LA: Track Premiere: Alexander Elliott Miller's "Zanja Madre" from To....Oblivion, 10-9-18
Los Angeles Times: Want to Hear the Real La La Land?  Lend an ear to the L.A. Composers of the Hear Now Festival, 5-1-17
New Classic LA: Synchromy + HOCKET present Crusoe at LACC, 11-18-16
New Classic LA: Microtonal Music, New and Old, Captures Tuesdays@MonkSpace Listeners, 7-9-16
Sequenza 21: Microfest Concert at Monk Space, 7-6-16
New Classic LA: Review: Aron Kallay: Beyond 12: Volume II, 11-15-15
Boston Classical Review: Music of Young Composers Sparks at BNMI Wide-Ranging Program, 11-16-14
Los Angeles Times: Review: What's Next? Ensemble Deftly Explores Space, Time & Place, 8-26-13
San Francisco Classical Voice: Earplay Plays to Spellbind, 5-20-13
RELEASES
TO....OBLIVION
​Historic Landmarks Around Los Angeles
solo project for electric guitar, sound effects and video
FINDING BREATH
Single release, composition for violin, piano & electronics commissioned by Rafael Liebich and Alex Russell
HOCKET: #what2020soundslike
BGA (Breonna, George & Ahmaud)
Composition for piano, 4-hands, as part of HOCKET's #what2020soundslike project
ARON KALLAY: Beyond 12, Volume 2
The Blur of Time and Memory
Composition for microtonal digital piano, 
commissioned by and featured on Grammy nominee
​Aron Kallay's "Beyond 12, Volume 2.​"
DUO MONTAGNARD: Radiance
Chaparral
​Composition for alto sax and classical guitar
featured on the Duo Montagnard's album "Radiance."