Philip Miller: Special Boy
Philip is a composer and sound artist who works across a variety of media from film, live performance to video and sound installations. After making a leap from a career in law into the world of music, he completed a postgraduate degree in electro-acoustic music composition in England at Bournemouth University and then returned to South Africa to begin working full time in music. His long time collaboration with the artist, William Kentridge composing music for many of his films and installations, has gained him international recognition for recent projects including Five Themes at the Tate Modern, London, the opera production: Refuse the Hour, which is currently on tour in theatres across Europe as well as the multimedia installation Refusal of Time at Dokumenta 13 and at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
His own sound works have been exhibited at The Venice Bienalle ( 2013) Spier Contemporary (2011) (South Africa) and The Kaunas Biennial (2009) ( Lithuania). His live performance of the award –winning, choral composition, Rewind, a cantata for voice, tape and testimony has been performed in London, at the Royal Festival Hall, Celebrate Brooklyn, New York, The 62 Centre Williams College, Massachusetts, The Baxter and Market theatres in South Africa. He has scored numerous soundtracks to film and television shows including more recently his Emmy nominated soundtrack to HBO’s The Girl, The Bang Bang Club, Black Butterflies and Mary and Martha directed by Philip Noyce.
Miller is currently an honorary fellow at ARC (The Research Initiative in Archive and Public Culture) at the University of Cape Town. He is currently completing his new opera, Extracts from the Underground, exploring the subterranean sound world of miners in South Africa.
In October this year (2014), his music together with new films of Kentridge, will be performed at Carnegie Hall.