Cassandra Miller is all process. It’s not the same word that Steve Reich thought a gradual, directional inch through time, but something more all-encompassing, that goes far beyond any finished product. In the past few years, process and its verb-y associates–transcribing, improvising, collaborating, balancing, musicking–have become the primary concerns in Miller’s creative life.
Though this doesn’t stop listeners from being moved, in some cases extremely profoundly, by the stuff that comes at the end. Responding to her viola concerto “I cannot love without trembling” (premiered by Lawrence Power and the Brussels Philharmonic), New Yorker critic Alex Ross enthused about “music that reminds us how to cry.” Always possessing a lyrical quality—understandable given the vocal filter her source material travels through on its transformative journey from recording to sketch to eventual performance—Miller’s music can also be calm, serene, and sometimes simply blank. Perhaps that blankness has the Rothko effect: a minimal canvas that sits there, looking back at you, until it feels like it’s prying into your soul.
That effect can be beautiful, and also maddening. One of the most distressing experiences I’ve ever had in a concert hall was desperately needing the toilet during a performance of Miller’s string quartet, “About Bach.” A piece suspended in time, that forces the audience’s mind to wander out into the world and back into their own heads, my internal monologue decided to construct a pained, 25-minute-long speech about the exact consequences for my livelihood if I was to wet myself in the Wigmore Hall.
Ahead of a series of concerts at the Aldeburgh Festival focusing on her work, I met Miller in a coffee shop near her home in Leyton, east London. We spoke about end results, appropriation, breaking points, and daydreaming.
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