Composer Cassandra Miller receives President’s Alumni Award
by Kristy Farkas | March 4, 2025 | Alumni, Graduate, Award
The University of Victoria has revealed the recipients of its 2025 Distinguished Alumni Awards, and the School of Music is thrilled that renowned Canadian-British composer and UVic Music alumna Cassandra Miller is among the eight recipients of the prestigious President’s Alumni Award.
Presented by UVic’s President and the President of the UVic Alumni Association (UVAA) to distinguished alumni, the annual President’s Alumni Awards recognize the outstanding lifetime accomplishments of alumni who have either earned national or international regard or have had a significant local impact as a result of their outstanding professional achievements and/or service to society.
Music that transforms
Currently living in London, UK, Cassandra Miller is widely recognized for her rich and wistful compositions that “allow us to hear and feel in new ways” (TEMPO). Her composition methods incorporate a unique practice of meditation-based uncontrolled singing to learn about melody and repetition. She uses these vocal exercises together with creative transcription processes to transform pre-existing musical sources (from both within and outside the classical tradition) to magnify their expressive, personal, or fragile qualities.
“Music this uncalculatedly beautiful leaves you almost desperate with gratitude,” wrote Alex Ross of her work in The New Yorker, while The Guardian hailed her “Duet for Cello and Orchestra” as among the top 20 “Best Classical Music Works of the 21st Century.” Over the past year, her works have appeared internationally at the BBC Proms, GöteborgsOperans Danskompani and on tour with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. She has twice received the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music, Canada’s highest honour for composition.
Cassandra received her Bachelor of Music in Composition and Theory from the University of Victoria in 2005 and studied at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague (Richard Ayres and Yannis Kyriakides), privately with Michael Finnissy, and holds a doctorate from the University of Huddersfield (supervisor, Bryn Harrison). From 2018 to 2020 Miller was Associate Head of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, leading the undergraduate programme. She has been invited as a visiting teacher and lecturer at many institutions including Columbia, and CalArts, London’s Royal Academy of Music, Birmingham Conservatoire, McGill University, the University of Manitoba, and the Orkest de Ereprijs Young Composers Meeting. In 2025 she will be a visiting scholar for three months as lecturer at Stanford University.
Endless possibility
Cassandra originally came to UVic to further her studies on the harp, but her path quickly took an unexpected turn. “On the first day of classes,” she recalls, “I took a composition elective and then realized, ‘Oh gosh, this is what I do now.’ It was life-changing.” She describes the School of Music as a place where creativity knew no bounds. “You were taught that to be an artist was to be a bit of a weirdo. It was so freeing and so important.”
During her time at UVic, Cassandra not only honed her craft but also discovered how to be truly creative—how to be free and playful by being herself. Initially, she attributed this to a strong education, but later, she recognized that it was also something more: “It was artistically unique and incredibly important. It was a very special place.”