Acclaimed composer joins APC research group

Composer Philip Miller will be attending his first Archive and Public research workshop in April, having joined the research initiative as an Honorary Research Scholar.

Miller's interest in working with archive as an instrumental part of the compositional process was sparked by his participation in the group exhibition, Holdings, curated by Professor Jane Taylor, as part of with the broader Refiguring the Archive project conceived by Professor Carolyn Hamilton in 1998.

This work led him to conceive and compose the multimedia choral work, Rewind: A Cantata for voice, tape and testimony, in collaboration with the visual artist, Gerard Marx, using fragments of the recorded testimonies from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.

Miller first practised in the field of intellectual property and labour law, before making a leap into the world of music composition. 

A large part of his music practice develops out of collaborative multimedia projects, mainly in theatre and film. His first collaboration was with the artist, William Kentridge, in 1994, composing music for the film, Felix in Exile.  Since then, he and Kentridge have worked together on such projects as Nine Drawings for Projection and Sounds from the Black Box. They are currently completing the multimedia opera, Refuse the Hour, and, during 2012, Miller will be touring with the production to Dokumenta13 in Kassel, Germany, as well as to the Avignon Festival in France.