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January 2005: Jody Miller, recorder

Jody Miller, Director of the Emory Early Music Ensemble, Prepares January 27 Performance of Rare Jewish Cantata

Early Music Ensemble Resources Grow Under Miller’s Lead

Jody Miller and the Emory Early Music Ensemble will team with Matthew Peaceman of Mainz, Germany, for a performance on January 27, 2005 of a rarely performed cantata written for the Jewish celebration of Hoschan'ah Rabbah in 1733 (8:00 p.m., Emory University’s Cannon Chapel).

Miller, a native Mississippian whose interests during his free time range from cooking traditional Southern fare to working on his car, has been playing the recorder since he was very young. “I got my first recorder a year after I started playing trumpet in the junior high school band,” he says. “I bought my dark green plastic soprano recorder in a discount store and started teaching myself from the fingering chart on the box.”

With this green plastic recorder, Miller began a lifelong interest in the recorder and early music. “By the time I got to high school, I bought myself a set of sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor, and bass recorders and had talked several of my friends into playing in an ensemble at my school,” he says. He later attended college at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he revived the study and practice of early music.

Since Miller became director of the Emory Early Music Ensemble (EME), he has made it his goal to include Emory students in the ensemble. “When I took over, I began to spread the word around campus that the ensemble was welcoming students. Since then, the EME has grown from having no students to having about 20 students a semester,” or nearly half of the numbers making up the ensemble. The EME also comprises Emory staff and alumni.

Also under Miller’s direction, the ensemble has begun to acquire a large collection of early instruments, all replicas of instruments that would have been used in music performed before 1750. Among the instruments are recorders, harpsichords, and members of the viol family, which are cousins to the violin. Most students who join the ensemble have no experience playing an early instrument. “They do play a modern instrument or have at least a little music background, but their instrument of choice for the EME is usually new to them,” says Miller. Consequently, nearly everyone who joins the EME starts near the beginning stage.

The ensemble includes four components: a vocal ensemble, made up of ten to sixteen a cappella voices; a baroque orchestra, made up of traditional string instruments that use gut strings and baroque bows and that are tuned at a low baroque pitch; a Renaissance band, featuring recorder, viola da gamba, harpsichord, crum horn, and various other wind, string, and percussion instruments; and chamber music, which varies from semester to semester.

In addition to directing the ensemble during the academic year, Miller directs a summer recorder orchestra. He is applied instructor for historical instruments in the Emory Music Department, and he teaches beginning recorder classes. He is also a band teacher at McCleskey Middle School in Marietta. A professional recorder player, Miller is a strong supporter of contemporary music for early instruments. He has commissioned composers, including Timothy Broege, to compose pieces that he has performed in concert.

Written by Nancy Condon
Communications Coordinator
Arts at Emory, Schwartz Center for Performing Arts

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