Tania Miller conductor Victoria Symphony Orchestra
Tania Miller’s appointment as Music Director of the Victoria Symphony confirms her reputation as a consummate musician and leader. She has emerged as one of Canada's rising young conductors to watch. Since her debut at the Victoria Symphony Splash in August 2003, Victorians have been having a love affair with Maestra Miller, as she is affectionately known in Victoria.
At the age of thirty-three (2004) Tania is the youngest current Music Director of a major Canadian orchestra, and the first woman to be appointed to such a significant post in the history of the industry in Canada. Tania, who hails from Saskatchewan, is one of two Canadian-born conductors leading major orchestras in the country, the other being Peter Oundjian of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
Tania Miller's appointment as Music Director of the Victoria Symphony confirms her reputation as a consummate musician and leader. Recently named Associate Conductor of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra for the 2003-2004 season, Tania had already served three seasons as Assistant Conductor, leading approximately thirty-five concerts in the past season alone across a variety of series.
She is the conductor of the Toronto contemporary ensemble ERGO, with whom she premiered a number of compositions in Munich, Toronto and New York. Tania Miller was the Assistant Conductor of the Carmel Bach Festival in Carmel, California from 1997-2001, where she worked closely with internationally renown conductor Bruno Weil and many of the world’s leading Baroque artists. Tania was Artistic Director of Michigan Opera Works in Ann Arbor, Michigan from 1997-2000 and conductor of Detroit's Friends of Opera, where she lead productions of La Boheme, Semele, The Rape of Lucretia, Cosi fan Tutte and Dido and Aeneas.
She conducted Opera McGill's productions in Montreal in 1999 and 2000 of Les Contes d'Hoffmann and Le Nozze di Figaro. Miller's past and upcoming guest conducting engagements include appearances with various orchestras across Canada and the United States including the Toronto, Winnipeg, Oregon, Toledo, London, and Saskatoon Symphony Orchestras. Tania completed a D.M.A and Master's degree in conducting from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
What the media has to say
"It was wonderful to hear this dark, lovely, sombre work reclaimed by such a masterly performance by the VSO, led by Tania Miller, and what a gift she is to the city's orchestra. She has absolute authority over the score, clarifying its dense textures, her long term thoughts giving it the shape it needs and bringing out every detail, its variety, its delicious orientalisms, the ravishments of the slow movement. She has the gift of disappearing into the music, the sign of a true conductor. It was 45 minutes of bliss."
- Vancouver Sun
“… the audience called Tania Miller back for two encores, the second becoming a standing ovation. She had earlier complemented the SSO on a grand week together. The feeling should be mutual as Miller's passionate, poetic, and highly articulate conducting was certainly a treat for the audience.”
- Saskatoon Star Phoenix
“ From the resonant opening chord to the tumultuous closing bars Miller directed a reading which seldom, if ever, put a foot wrong. “
- Victoria Times Colonist
Interesting Facts
Tania Miller is the 8th Music Director in the History of the Victoria Symphony, following:
Melvin Knudsen (1941-1948)
Hans Gruber (1948-1964)
Otto Werner Mueller (1964-1967)
Laszlo Gati (1967-1978)
Paul Freeman (1979-1988)
Peter McCoppin (1989-1999)
Kees Bakels (1999-2001)
The female equivalent of the male appellation “Maestro” in Italian is “Maestra” - although Tania prefers “Tania”.
