Mark Miller will co-conduct the Cape Symphony Orchestra's "And the Winner Is..." CapePOPS! concert on February 22 & 23, 2025. As our Principal Clarinetist, Mark is truly one of our shining stars! He is also Music Director and Conductor of the Cape Symphony Youth Orchestra (CSYO), the flagship ensemble of the Cape Symphony Youth Orchestra Program.
CSYO had just one concert before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The ensemble met online for the next year and a half, during which Mark instructed the group in music theory and score reading. Since being able to reconvene in person, the program has more than doubled in size and continues to attract young musicians from across the Cape and Islands. With Mark at the helm, CSYO is inspiring and training the next generation of Cape Symphony musicians.
A self-described “concentration junkie,” Mark Miller gives music his total focus, whether playing, conducting, or listening. It’s important to him to listen analytically, which is an active process. “The only way to do it is to give it 100% of your brain. It takes you out of everything else.” This means not listening in the car. “I listen more to talk radio, while driving. It’s probably safer,” he chuckles.
Mark especially enjoys Cape Symphony’s Masterpiece performances. “With classical, time has let the cream rise to the top,” he says. “I find great interest in anything we program in classical... it’s serious music that’s trying to communicate something.” He still has a newspaper review of his first concert with Cape Symphony, in 1992. It was Brahms.
On the CapePOPS! side of things, he says, “I like music older than my age: swing era, Broadway classics, jazz.”
Mark composed a Chanukah piece debuted by the Cape Symphony Orchestra at its 2023 Holiday on the Cape concerts . “A Chanukah Festival” was written with a good-humored nod to Leroy Anderson of “A Christmas Festival” fame (“that’s the best medley ever written,” says Mark), and is very good fun for musicians and audience alike!
In a rare moment off stage and away from his desk, you might find Mark cheering on his Florida State Seminoles. A native Floridian and FSU alumnus (with degrees in composition and clarinet performance), he says, “You’ve gotta support your home team!”
“Actually, there are a lot of congruences between sports and what we do in music,” he reflects. “Orchestral music requires great teamwork, and actions performed through precise muscle memory. Excellence of execution is critical in both. In music, there doesn’t have to be a loser, and you get to do it past 40!”
Mark’s commitment to excellence of execution keeps the bar high both for the Cape Symphony Youth Orchestra and for his own musicianship. As Cape Symphony audiences can tell you, it shows.
