Philip Miller

Philip Miller (b. 1964) is a South African composer and sound artist. He composes for stage and screen and has won numerous awards for these scores. His frequent collaborations with visual artists, choreographers and filmmakers have extended his musical boundaries into many different sound worlds, and into working with a diverse range of musicians. His musical influences range from traditional African choral music to the theatre music of Kurt Weil. Often his work will start with a recorded fragment from a sound archive which Miller will develop using techniques of sound collage and digital sampling. These “sound fragments” may be collected from the Internet or recorded from the physical space he inhabits. He often draws inspiration from the city soundscape of Johannesburg, which speaks to different cultures, narratives and political histories. Miller collaborates frequently with the artist William Kentridge, most recently for the multimedia installation Refusal of Time (2012) and the concert event Triumphs and Laments (2016), a multi-orchestral work performed on the banks of the River Tiber. Philip Miller’s works reflect on his pre-occupation with using sound as a means of exploring historic memory and states of trauma.

“Ikh vil nit visn – Nenoriu žinoti – I don’t want to know.”. 2017