Philip Miller is a South African composer and sound artist based in Cape Town. His work is multi-faceted, often developing from collaborative projects in theatre, film, video and sound installations.
Miller is currently[when?] an honorary fellow at ARC (The Research Initiative in Archive and Public Culture) at the University of Cape Town.
One of Miller's most significant collaborators is the internationally acclaimed artist William Kentridge. His music to Kentridge's animated films and multimedia installations has been heard in some of the most prestigious museums, galleries and concert halls in the world, including MoMA, SFMOMA, The Guggenheim Museums (both New York and Berlin), Tate Modern, London, La Fenice Opera House, Carnegie Hall and in Australia at the Perth Festival.[1]
Philip Miller in rehearsal for Triumphs and Laments
This collaboration dates back to 1993 when he wrote the score for Kentridge's film Felix in Exile,[2] part of his celebrated Soho Eckstein series. This evolved into the live concert series 9 Drawings for Projection and Black Box/Chambre Noir touring Australia, the UK, (Germany), Italy, Belgium, France and the US.
The lecture-opera production Refuse the Hour, as well as the multimedia installation on which it is based, The Refusal of Time,[3] were presented at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
2016 has seen Triumphs & Laments in Rome[4] which featured Miller's music for two processional marching bands with solo singers, choirs, musicians and dramatic live shadow play, all performed against the backdrop of Kentridge's 500-metre frieze along the banks of the Tiber River.
A number of their collaborations are on tour in Europe in 2016, including Paper Music, which makes its German premiere at the Berlin Festspiele in July 2016 and The Refusal of Time at Whitechapel Gallery in London in September.[citation needed] Miller was a contributing composer for the 2016 Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music.[5]
Original works
Miller's compositional process could be best described as one of re-assembly. These extracted sound and musical shards become refigured into a new sound world using layering and "sound collage" techniques. It often incorporates samples of "found sound" and recorded word texts which serve as counterpoint to the musical context in which they are embedded, intertwining both acoustic and electronic sound elements into his work.
His works reflect on his preoccupation with using sound as a means of exploring memory, states of trauma and the re-examination of historical archive in a sound world of his creation. These techniques and approach have been incorporated in his compositions.
An exhibition of sculptures by Deborah Bell which showed at the Everard Read Gallery in Johannesburg and Cape Town in 2015, which featured music and sound by Philip Miller: the chord of a single-stringed instrument, the call of a ram's horn, the sound of a violin or the chanting of a Xhosasangoma.[7]
Anatomy of a Mining Accident
Anatomy of a Mining Accident
A small-chamber opera in which Miller explores the subterranean sound world of miners in South Africa. The focus of this work dealt with the subterranean sound world of local miners – exploring the use of localised mining language or dialect "fanakalo", a pidgin language used in the mines – and how this reflects on the current mining crisis in South Africa and the tragic massacre of 38 miners at Marikana in 2013. Composed and created in 2014 in association with Cape Town Opera and the vocal ensemble it played both in Sweden and in Cape Town.[8]
It was also installed as a sound and video installation at Wits Art Museum (WAM) as a public art project.[8]
Part of an installation at The Kaunas Biennial (2009) (Lithuania). It used recorded telephone conversations with Holocaust survivors, which were then incorporated into the recordings of a local Lithuanian choir learning to sing an old Yiddish folk song which was popular at the time of the mass executions of Jews.
Special Boy
Selected for the prestigious Spier Contemporary exhibition in South Africa, this used old tape recordings of his voice as a thirteen-year-old boy practising his speech for the customary coming of age ceremony, the [barmitzvah], juxtaposing these recordings with his adult voice as a gay man reflecting on questions of masculinity, sexuality and religion.[1]
