Biography
Assistant Conductor of the Columbus Symphony, Music Director of the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra, and Music Director of the Apollo Ensemble of Boston, Elias Miller has established a reputation as a leading young conductor and orchestra builder. He has worked with numerous orchestras across the United States including the New York Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Nashville Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Albany Symphony, assisting notable conductors such as Giancarlo Guerrero, Juanjo Mena, JoAnn Falletta, Scott Yoo, Carlos Miguel Prieto, Eun Sun Kim, Paul McCreesh, Christoph König, Gemma New, Ruth Reinhardt, Erina Yashima, and David Alan Miller. Miller made his Carnegie Hall debut in the fall of 2023 guest conducting the New York International Symphony Orchestra. Other 2023-24 and summer 2024 engagements included work with the Nashville Symphony and the Minnesota Orchestra, 8 masterworks programs with the Apollo Ensemble, 4 concerts with Upbeat New Hampshire, and several performances at the Colorado College Summer Music Festival, where Miller twice served as Assistant Conductor. 2024-25 will see him conduct a variety of programs with the Columbus Symphony including in-school programs, young people's concerts, holiday run-outs, picnic with the pops programs, and other special events concerts like the symphony's annual Halloween Spooktacular and CSO Fantasy Camp. He will also conduct 4 programs with the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra and 4 masterworks programs with the Apollo Ensemble.
An active conductor of opera and oratorio, Miller conducted Festival Theater Hudson's inaugural performance: a staged production of Wagner’s Die Walküre (Act I) in 2021 and co-conducted a production of Philip Glass' La Belle et la Bête, at the University of Houston's Moores Opera Center in 2022. Between 2016 and 2019, Miller led the Harvard Early Music Society in several premieres of operatic works. These productions included the Boston premiere of J.A. Hasse’s Alcide al Bivio in collaboration with the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra, the North American premiere of Telemann’s 1745 Johannespassion, a production that featured famed countertenor Charles Humphries and earned Miller an enthusiastic preview in the Boston Globe, and the North American premiere of J.A. Hasse’s Sanctus Petrus et Sancta Maria Magdalena. Miller has also conducted performances of operas by Gluck (Orfeo ed Euridice, Independent Opera Production), Stravinsky (The Rake's Progress, Harvard College Opera), William Grant Still (Minette Fontaine, Graduate Students at the University of Michigan), and Gilbert & Sullivan (Ruddigore, Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert & Sullivan Players). Miller also served as the Assistant Conductor of Opera Saratoga in summer 2020.
From 2022 until 2024, Miller served as the Principal Conductor of Upbeat New Hampshire, an El Sistema USA member program. While there, Miller established an honors chamber music program and an annual week-long conducting workshop with a professional ensemble. Other ensembles he has conducted in the past include the Pro Arte Orchester in Vienna, Austria, the Hudson Festival Orchestra, the University of Michigan's Symphony, Philharmonia, and Campus orchestras, the Ann Arbor Camerata, the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra Chamber Players, The Weston Wind Quintet & Friends, the Medomak Festival Orchestra, and the Chromos Collaborative Orchestra. Miller has also served as the assistant conductor for the Boston Chamber Symphony, and the Orchestra Book Club.
A distinguished pianist and cellist, Miller has performed solo recitals in the United States and in Europe on both instruments and has served as a vocal coach and rehearsal pianist for many operatic productions. He holds degrees from Harvard University (A.B. in Music, summa cum laude) and the University of Michigan (M.M. in Orchestral Conducting) and completed his postgraduate studies at the University for Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. Miller’s teachers and mentors include Mark Stringer, Scott Yoo, Kenneth Kiesler, Federico Cortese, and his father, David Alan Miller.
Press
The Gazette (Colorado Springs)
June 12th, 2024
"Miller offered an elegant but precise reading of [Rossini's William Tell Overture] with stalwart assistance from cellist Ethan Blake, oboist Caroline Becker, flutist Julie Park, and an orchestra playing on the edge of their seats."
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The Boston Musical Intelligencer
April 23rd, 2024
"Within a span of about eight minutes, we experienced Apollo’s realization of a wide and varied set of musical demands under the attentive direction of Elias Miller."
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Apollo Ensemble of Boston
January 22nd, 2023
"Much of this success must, of course, go to conductor, Elias Miller. Of all the qualities needed by a conductor I would say that the ability to transmit his or her joy of the music, make the players want to perform for him and to match his fervor is paramount. And this I believe was felt by all in the audience as was obvious in their visceral responses. These three stalwarts of the symphonic repertoire have a pretty predictable built in audience response, but last night there was some electricity in the air. Mr. Miller is, I believe, destined for a stellar career and Harvard should be extremely proud of this alum."
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The Boston Musical Intelligencer
July 25th, 2022
"The Apollo Ensemble and Miller (conducting the Tchaikovsky from memory) positively scintillated in these supple yet intense traversals under arduous conditions. Bravo."
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The Boston Musical Intelligencer
October 4th, 2021
"One could tell from the body language of the musicians how committed they were to both the music and to the gifted conductor, Elias Miller, who knew exactly what he wanted and how to convey it to his 'troops.'"
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The Boston Globe
October 26th, 2017
"[Co-directors] Miller and Grills have really steered the whole project themselves, from fund-raising and securing venues to printing programs and enlisting the required forces, which include a small orchestra, and chorus and five vocal soloists… Most of the other conducting projects Miller has undertaken have been similarly self-driven, entrepreneurial undertakings.”
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The Boston Musical Intelligencer
October 20th, 2017
"Throughout the evening, conductor Elias Miller achieved a fine balance of the components of his ensemble, bringing out the passionate violins and soaring flutes that often mirror soloists’ melismatic runs."
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About Apollo Ensemble
Founded in 2018 by Elias Miller and Michael Tabak and conducted by Elias Miller, the Apollo Ensemble of Boston is a 70-member orchestra made up of some of the area’s best musicians. Now in its sixth season, the ensemble has already explored a diverse body of repertoire in a series of well-attended and well-received concerts throughout the Greater Boston Area. Although it began as a smaller ensemble primarily performing works for chamber orchestra, string orchestra, and wind ensemble, Apollo has since grown into a full orchestra which regularly performs the larger scale works of the symphonic repertoire. The Apollo Ensemble brings together professional musicians, conservatory students, and semi-professional musicians, providing top-level players excellent performance opportunities and bringing outstanding music to Boston audiences in accessible, free community concerts. The 2023-24 season will see the ensemble perform four concerts in St. John’s Church in Jamaica Plain and one in First Church Cambridge and feature 5 terrific Boston-based soloists, pieces by several young composers, and some of the greatest works of the standard repertoire.