“I think what’s so incredible about being a conductor is that opportunity to work with people from different backgrounds and different cultures,” says Tania Miller. There are different approaches, with one constant thread. “We meet with the music.”
Tania Miller’s career has taken her literally across the globe. In the 2023-24 season alone, she debuted with Vancouver Opera, and conducted a concert with soprano Sondra Radvanovsky and Vancouver’s Opera West, along with first time engagements with the Baton Rouge Symphony and Illinois Symphony, and repeat engagements to the Springfield Symphony, Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, and London Symphonia — and that’s not the whole list.
In previous years, she’s been to South Korea, throughout Europe and the United States, as well as Canada.
Tania is recently back from a guest conducting engagement in Warsaw. “Music is such a connecting force,” she says. It’s about working with artists who have a singular focus, what she calls “the collective search for the meaning in the music. It’s the connection,” she adds. “We come together and have fresh ideas. I think that’s one of the fascinating aspects of orchestras and making music together.”
Interpreting the music is always the challenge. “What is the music saying to us, and how we express it, it’s always changing. I find it fascinating.”
Facing a new group of seasoned professionals who expect her to lead them through the music is, in a way, like meeting old friends every time. “No matter who it is, I know we’ll always meet on a common ground, starting through the music.”
A New Beginning With Brott Music
Her recent appointment as Artistic Director and Conductor of the Brott Music Festival, the National Academy Orchestra of Canada and BrottOpera offers an opportunity that’s unique in its sheer variety. The Brott Music Festival presents a concert series that incorporates classical music, jazz, pops and children’s educational concerts. The National Academy Orchestra of Canada and BrottOpera are summer programs that offer intensive professional level training for advanced orchestral and opera students.
“I’m really excited and inspired by the potential of the Brott Festival,” she says. Tania appreciates the work and care that the organization has put into developing young Canadian musicians as well as the audience in the Hamilton and Niagara areas for 36 years.
Working with young musicians and opera singers offers its own rewards. “You are sharing music and inspiring [them],” she says. The young artists of the National Academy Orchestra go through the rehearsal process as well as experiencing workshops and benefiting from professional mentors. “We are all working together to create the musicians of tomorrow […] with the opportunities and understanding of what their futures will be.”
She’s hoping the upcoming auditions for 2024 will draw young musicians from across Canada, and add to a sense of national connection. With both the National Academy Orchestra and BrottOpera, she’s looking forward to working with a highly talented group.
“I’m excited,” she says. “It gives us the opportunity to truly find connections between people […] and music.”
With a group of young musicians, with their energy and willingness to try new ideas, she’s looking to experiment with different modes of presentation, including immersive concert experiences. The details are still being hammered out. “To focus on [the idea] that music is an experience.”
It’s a shared experience, and one that brings communities together. “I want to find ways to build those connections in Hamilton.”
Outdoor and pop-up concerts are a possibility. Along with many industry leaders, she believes that expanding the music beyond the confines of the concert hall is the key to its future as a vibrant art form. The concert hall and all its formality and protocols isn’t dead, but it can’t be the only way to experience the music. “I think that’s where the industry needs to go now.”
As she notes, Brott Music already has a track record of presenting diverse concerts and genres. “I want to expand on that.”
Hooking a younger demographic into the Western classical tradition is also a key to the art form’s future. “If we in the orchestra — the arts sector — look to young people, and really engage with them — what inspires them, what makes them passionate? — I think we have a lot to learn from them.”
Tania Miller conducts the TSO in Julien Bilodeau’s La fantaisie du pendu (Hangman’s Fantasy) in 2018:
Contemporary Music
Miller is known as a champion of contemporary music. “I have a deep connection to contemporary music,” she says, “not just supporting creators, but for the sake of all of us, […] to develop experiences that are meaningful in our modern times,” she says.
Specific plans with Brott Music are in still in development, and will be announced as they firm up. Successfully presenting contemporary works to audiences steeped in the centuries old traditions of Western classical music takes a proactive approach.
“When I experience contemporary creations with an audience, I am changing how they perceive pieces of the past,” Tania says. Opening up your ears to new music changes how you hear the old. “It’s not about certain ideas of harmony and melody, but also sound worlds, and a sense of being on a journey,” she explains. “Music can create different awarenesses and experiences. Contemporary composers take us on a journey that we don’t expect, and recreate expectations,” she adds.
“We should expect to be surprised.”
It’s a conductor’s job to develop audience expectations, and to take them on that journey. “People get excited — you’re a leader in an arts organization. That’s what the arts can do, is to take us to places we haven’t been before.”
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