Biography

Elias Miller

Music Director of the Apollo Ensemble of Boston since 2018 and Principal Conductor of the Upbeat New Hampshire Youth Orchestra since 2022, 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 also works frequently in artistic media, putting his conducting experience to use directing score calls for video productions and livestreams of orchestral concerts. In this capacity, he has worked with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the American Symphony Orchestra, The Orchestra Now, and many more. Miller made his Carnegie Hall debut in the fall of 2023 guest conducting the New York International Symphony Orchestra. His other 2023-24 engagements include work with the Nashville Symphony and the Minnesota Orchestra, 5 masterworks programs with the Apollo Ensemble, and several concerts with Upbeat New Hampshire. Summer 2024 will see Miller lead two more programs with the Apollo Ensemble and return to the Colorado College Summer Music Festival as its Assistant Conductor.



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). 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 Opera Saratoga, the Boston Chamber Symphony, and the Orchestra Book Club.

Elias Miller Conducting

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 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."


Read More

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.'"


Read More

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.”


Read More

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."


Read More

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.

© 2024 Elias Miller