DAVID ALAN MILLER’S 30 SEASON ALBANY SYMPHONY – AND COUNT S AT ING
Thirty seasons, about 500 concerts and two Grammys later, it has been a busy three decades since David Alan Miller first arrived in the Capital Region. But to him, it doesn’t feel like it has been that long. “I feel like I just started work. Like I just got here.”
Miller arrived in the Capital Region in 1992 from Los Angeles to take the reins of the Albany Symphony as music director. He was replacing Geoffrey Simon, who resigned from the ASO in 1989.
“As a young conductor, you're always trying to prove yourself,” he said. “You're standing before this group of musicians, many of whom have long years of experience. As a conductor, you're supposed to guide them through these masterworks that they may know very intimately. And it's a difficult challenge for a young person.”
The beginning was intimidating for Miller. Only 26 years old, he spent most of his time trying to hide his inexperience. Now, with age and years under his belt came not a victory lap, but a greater sense of curiosity, something Miller calls a "backward evolution.”
“The older I get, the more questions I ask,” he said. “The more I behave the way I should have behaved when I was in my 20s. I think life is a little like that, you learn as you go, mentally you get wiser and wiser. So now I feel like there's so much I want to know, and I'm much less afraid to ask.”
This is wisdom that the veteran conductor does his best to tell newcomers, to not be afraid and to stay open to learning more. According to Miller, the best conductors at any age are the curious ones, people who are always asking questions.
“Even though I've done the Beethoven Third Symphony many times before, I'm deeply enmeshed in asking questions about Beethoven,” he said, “and trying to get to the bottom of what he had in mind, and that is what's so exciting about wrestling with
great works. You can always come back to them and find out more.”
In 1991, during his acceptance speech at the Palace Theatre for his new position, Miller listed a number of plans, ending with a simple wish: "I hope you will dream with me.”
These plans included a family concert series that would introduce new audiences to music, a summer classical season, a chamber orchestra festival and a community-wide Haydn festival. He went on to discuss an annual choral collaboration, a pop series and a school music program with the local school districts. Finally, he wished to take the ASO on tours and to do a multi- year retrospective recording project.
It is safe to say that Miller achieved every single one of those goals.
Jerel Golub, the board chair of the ASO who has worked with Miller for 25 of his 30 years, believes so too.
“From my perspective, David is kind of like the Pied Piper,” said Golub. “He just pulls you in with this incredible combination of a love of music, his knowledge, a great ability to communicate, his incredible enthusiasm and a magnetic personality. And he's led us all on this incredible journey of growth and discovery
over the past 30 years and it's just been really a pleasure to be a part of it.”
Miller credits the environment he has thrived in.
“I believe that the community and I have evolved together,” he said. “The Capital Region that I work in today is so different from the Capital Region when I arrived, but many things are similar. It was always a community of very interesting educated, sophisticated music lovers.”
As for the ASO, the past 30 years have been less like a job and more like a marriage, he said.
“The relationships deepen, the understanding deepens. And you don't have to say as much to be understood sometimes,” he said. “That is, if it's a healthy relationship, the different parties sort of intuitively understand each other. So, I find that I can get a lot more done in rehearsal and concert with less effort.”
He still “sweats bullets” during first rehearsals, he says, compulsively rehearsing and doing his best to be as prepared as possible. But with each rehearsal, his confidence builds up, as does a silent, unspoken intimacy with the musicians.
“I feel that there's a be tion,” Miller said, “becau know each other fairly in worked together so close al thoughts about the sty very wonderful kind of n communicate, which is e ductor does anyway.”
Anna Kuwabara, the e ASO, who worked with o cago and St. Louis, says t a grand old institution, u felt light and airy, keepin no difficulty.
“The orchestras I've w bit like ocean liners,” sai little hard to turn around Albany Symphony is like it's responsive, it can rea a lot of that is David.”
Over the past decade a lated two Grammys out o nominated for, two Leon for Education, An ASCA
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I believe that the community and I have evolved together. The Capital Region that I work in today is so different from the Capital Region when I arrived, but many things are similar. It was always a community of very interesting educated, sophisticated music lovers.”
— David Alan Miller
Award-winning maestro says curiosity still makes role an exciting one
autiful communicase the musicians and I timately from having ly. They know my generle of the piece. There's a on-verbal ability to ssentially what a conxecutive
director of the ther orchestras in Chihat while an orchestra is nder Miller the ASO has g up with the times with for Innovative Programming, 26 more ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, two John S. Edwards Awards for Strongest Commitment to New American Music.
They have also been the only orchestra to be invited to Carnegie Hall’s Spring for Music Festival more than twice and have been invited to the SHIFT Festival at the Kennedy Center
Miller begins his thirtieth season on Saturday, with the aforementioned Beethoven’s “Eroica” anchoring a night of music at the Palace Theatre. It is a full, in-person season, a celebration coming after the virtual season of 2020-21. This season, like its predecessors, has that expected "Miller mix" of the classic and the contemporary. Beside old names like Brahms, Beethoven and Mozart, are newer ones like Jessie Montgomery,
Viet Cuong, Erina Yashima and Hannah Kendall. The entire symphony has looked forward to this, to play for audiences both in-person, while still maintaining the life-stream option that was introduced last year. For a full schedule, go to albanysymphony.com.
As the Pied Piper of the Capital Region, the captain of this musical ship and the metaphorical spouse of the orchestra, Miller has many roles and laurels to his name. But to him, unlike a piper, sailor or spouse, the key, he says is to let go.
Miller spends most of his time before a performance isolating and keeping to himself, a step that has become necessary with the pandemic. Immersing himself in the music and the context