As part of the organization’s 25th Anniversary Season, Stratford Summer Music is presenting Make Mine a Double: Miller + Mendelssohn on October 22. The evening will be hosted by broadcaster, writer and musician Tom Allen, and feature works that span two centuries of music.
Stratford Summer Music Artistic Director Mark Fewer and a team of string players will perform music by Canadian composer Jared Miller, along with Felix Mendelssohn’s beloved Octet in E-flat Major.
Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20
Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20, marks its 200th anniversary in 2025.
Felix wrote his groundbreaking String Octet at the age of 16, with the first version completed on October 15, 1825. He dedicated the music to violinist Eduard Rietz, a friend who was marking his 23rd birthday. It is believed that the piece premiered at a home concert at the Mendelssohn household.
Mendelssohn composed the work for four violins, two violas, and two cellos, and essentially created a new chamber music genre with the piece. It was innovative in an era when the string quartet dominated chamber music composition.
The octet uses each of the eight instruments in a different way, creating contrasts within a coherent musical soundscape. It ranges from the elegant opening allegro to a more meditative second movement. The third movement, a scherzo, was inspired by verses from Goethe’s Faust,
Wisps of cloud and mist
Are lit from above
Breeze in the foliage and wind in the reeds
And all is scattered.
“…the whole piece is to be played staccato and pianissimo… the trills passing away with the quickness of lightning… one feels so near to the world of spirits, carried away in the air, half inclined to snatch up a broomstick and follow the aerial procession… and at the end, …all has vanished.”
The Octet ends in a fugue. It’s no secret that Mendelssohn was a fan of Bach, and had studied him extensively, even by his mid-teens. Overall, in style, it edges more towards Romanticism than the Classical principles he was studying at the time.
While the work was completed in 1825 initially, he revised it before its eventual publication in 1832.
Jared Miller
Canadian/American composer and pianist Jared Miller earned a bachelor’s degree in composition and piano from the University of British Columbia, followed by a Master’s and Doctoral degree in Composition from The Juilliard School. After earning his D.M.A., he took a position as Assistant Professor of Music Composition and Theory, and subsequently Head of Composition Department, at Dalhousie University from 2020 until 2022.
In 2017, at the age of 25, he was named Composer in Residence for the Victoria Symphony Orchestra, and held the position for four years. He was named the Composer-in-Residence for the Lansing Symphony Orchestra in Michigan from 2023-2026.
Today, he is Assistant Professor of Composition in the School of Music at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
Miller’s music has been recorded by the Ensemble Paramirabo, Exponential Ensemble, and others, and performed by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Nashville Symphony, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Victoria Symphony, l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, the symphony orchestras of Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Edmonton, and other ensembles. He’s worked with soloists such as pianists Sara Davis Buechner, Jani Parsons, Robert Fleitz and Imri Talgam, harpist Parker Ramsay, and violinist Francisco Fullana.
He has been nominated for a JUNO Award for Under Sea, Above Sky, commissioned and recorded by the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, and won the SOCAN Jan V. Matejcek Award for New Classical Composition.
Miller’s new octet was commissioned by architect Robert Lemon in memory of his late partner, internationally recognized interior designer Robert Ledingham. The music celebrates his personal legacy, as well as the ongoing success of Stratford Summer Music.
The Concert
Make Mine a Double: Miller + Mendelssohn takes places on October 22, 2025 at Lazaridis Hall — Tom Patterson Theatre. You can purchase tickets to the concert alone, or add on entrance to the Meet the Artists Reception.
- Find tickets and details [HERE].
Are you looking to promote an event? Have a news tip? Need to know the best events happening this weekend? Send us a note.
#LUDWIGVAN
Get the daily arts news straight to your inbox.