Hannah takes centre stage at New York’s Carnegie Hall
A YOUNG woman from Fuddletown in Mayglass has taken her musical talents to one of the most iconic venues in the world, Carnegie Hall in New York city.
Playing the lead French Horn with the Juilliard Orchestra, Hannah Miller performed in front of more than one thousand people inside an auditorium which has become synonymous with some of the great musicians of our time.
And not only did Hannah take on one of the lead roles for the complex and lengthy Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, she also had a solo role which saw her take a seat at the front and centre of the orchestra.
There to witness Hannah’s big night were eight members of her family, among them her grandparents Ruth and Richard Miller, the founding members of the Wexford Sinfonia.
Hannah’s father Keith is now the Chairman of the Sinfonia and it was there where she initially cut her teeth at the age of 14. Having studied the Horn at the Royal Irish Academy of Music she then moved to Helsinki in Finland where a collaboration with the Juilliard Orchestra led to her big break.
‘I was working with the Kuopion Symphony Orchestra when we did a joint production with the Juilliard Orchestra which saw them come over and play with us and then us going over to them,’ Hannah recalls.
‘About a week after the production ended I received an email from Juilliard asking me to come for an audition. It was totally out of the blue, I was just delighted to get the opportunity; Juilliard would be renowned throughout the world.’
Such is the school’s renown that part of Hannah’s curriculum involved her performing at Carnegie Hall, but before she and her classmates performed further auditions were required to see who would fulfil each role.
‘I got the Principal Horn, it involved a solo role where I had to leave the horn section and move to the front of the orchestra and sit on a podium and play. It was quite an important role,’ says Hannah in understated fashion.
‘I got a lot of positive feedback afterwards, there were alumni from the college there and many of them were waiting to congratulate me backstage.’
Due to graduate from Juilliard in May, Hannah says she has learned never to plan more than six months ahead in her profession. However, in the short term she intends to move back home and freelance in Dublin.
Speaking from her family farm, the sound of cows mooing in the background, she says she would love to return to Wexford to live on a permanent basis and is currently planning a special event in her village of Fuddletown for later this year.
‘I’m setting up a festival in Fuddletown, it’ll be a classical music festival and it’s going to be held in August of this year,’ she says.
And its name? ‘We’re going to call it the Fuddlefest,’ Hannah reveals.