Russell Miller

Biography

Pianist Russell Miller has been a coach and teacher of vocal repertoire at Eastman since 1995. He has performed throughout the United States and abroad as soloist and accompanist, including concert tours to Korea and Hong Kong with tenor Robert White and to Alaska and the former Soviet Union with cellist Stephen Kates. With violist Donald McInnes, he has recorded works of Hindemith and Loeffler on the Kleos Classics label. Notable vocal collaborations include Schubert’s Winterreise with tenor Robert Swensen at the Pierpont Morgan Library, as well as in recital with Jan Opalach, Julia Broxholm, Susan Shafer, Marilyn Horne and Håkan Hagegård. For twelve years he was the musical director for the vocal quartet “SATB”, which performed a wide variety of repertoire from classical chamber pieces to Broadway.

A native of Los Angeles, Dr. Miller studied at the University of Southern California, the Manhattan School of Music and The Juilliard School, and holds a doctorate from the University of Michigan. His principal teachers have been Edith Knox, Brooks Smith, Gwendolyn Koldofsky, Marshall Williamson, Margo Garrett, Martin Katz, Louis Nagel and Graham Johnson. For twelve years he was a staff pianist and faculty member at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara and also served as pianist and harpsichordist for the Florentine Opera of Milwaukee for their productions of Rossini’s La cenerentola and Verdi’s Aïda.

Besides his current appointment at Eastman, Dr. Miller has also held faculty positions at The Cleveland Institute of Music, Bowling Green State University (Ohio), The Ohio State University and Oberlin College Conservatory, and recently as a visiting teacher at the University of Kansas and the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. In the summers, besides his years at the Music Academy, he has coached song and opera at the Pine Mountain Music Festival in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the “Oberlin in Italy” program and currently at the Vancouver International Song Institute in British Columbia.