Meet the Music Director

Maestra Tania Miller

Music Director

Tania Miller’s reputation as a consummate musician, leader, and communicator has grown rapidly in today’s orchestral scene. The 2007/2008 Season will mark Ms. Miller's fifth season as Music Director of the Victoria Symphony Orchestra.

Prior to her work in Victoria, Ms. Miller was with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra from 2000-2004, first as Assistant Conductor and finally as Associate Conductor. Her many North American guest conducting engagements include the Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, Windsor, Oregon, Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montreal, Toledo, London (ON), and Saskatoon Symphony Orchestras, and she recently made her European debut conducting the Berne Symphoniker in Switzerland where she will return in the 2008/2009 season.

Tania Miller co-founded the Michigan Opera Works in 1997 with a mandate to provide performance opportunities for emerging young professional artists. She also served as Artistic Director and conductor from 1997-2000, and led productions of Handel’s Semele, Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte. Ms. Miller has also conducted with Detroit’s Friends of Opera in performances of Puccini’s La Boheme. In 2000, she was asked to conduct a production of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann in 2000 with Opera McGill of Montreal on short notice when their conductor fell ill. The performances were such a success that she was invited back the following season to conduct Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.

Ms. Miller has worked extensively in the areas of Baroque and contemporary music. Her work as the Assistant Conductor of the Carmel Bach Festival from 1997-2001 gave her a unique opportunity to work closely with the internationally renowned conductor Bruno Weil and many of the world's leading Baroque artists. Tania began her work in the field of contemporary music as Assistant conductor of the Banff Festival of the Arts in 1997 in Banff, Canada. She has been a frequent guest conductor with the Toronto contemporary ensemble ERGO, with whom she premiered a number of compositions in Munich, Toronto and New York.Originally from Foam Lake, Saskatchewan, Tania Miller received her D.M.A and Master's degree in conducting from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan; studying with teachers Kenneth Kiesler and H. Robert Reynolds.

What the media has to say

"It was wonderful to hear this dark, lovely, somber work reclaimed by such a masterly performance by the VSO, led by Tania Miller, and what a gift she is to the city's orchestra. She has absolute authority over the score, clarifying its dense textures, her long term thoughts giving it the shape it needs and bringing out every detail, its variety, its delicious orientalisms, the ravishments of the slow movement. She has the gift of disappearing into the music, the sign of a true conductor. It was 45 minutes of bliss."
- Vancouver Sun

"...the audience called Tania Miller back for two encores, the second becoming a standing ovation. She had earlier complemented the SSO on a grand week together. The feeling should be mutual as Miller's passionate, poetic, and highly articulate conducting was certainly a treat for the audience."
- Saskatoon Star Phoenix

"From the resonant opening chord to the tumultuous closing bars Miller directed a reading which seldom, if ever, put a foot wrong. "
- Victoria Times Colonist

Interesting facts

Tania Miller is the 8th Music Director in the History of the Victoria Symphony, following:

Melvin Knudsen (1941-1948)
Hans Gruber (1948-1964)
Otto Werner Mueller (1964-1967)
Laszlo Gati (1967-1978)
Paul Freeman (1979-1988)
Peter McCoppin (1989-1999)
Kees Bakels (1999-2001)

The female equivalent of the male appellation "Maestro" in Italian is "Maestra".