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Elias Miller

Associate Conductor of the Columbus Symphony, Music Director of the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra (CSYO), and Music Director of the Apollo Ensemble of Boston, Elias Miller has established a reputation as a leading young conductor and orchestra builder. He has worked with numerous orchestras across the United States including the New York Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Nashville Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Albany Symphony, assisting notable conductors such as JoAnn Falletta, Giancarlo Guerrero, Eun Sun Kim, Juanjo Mena, Rossen Milanov, Carlos Miguel Prieto, Thomas Wilkins, and Scott Yoo. Miller has appeared as a guest conductor with the Utah Symphony in two performances at their Deer Valley Music festival, and with the New York International Symphony Orchestra in concerts in Carnegie Hall and the Harvard Club of Boston. As the Columbus Symphony’s associate conductor, Miller regularly conducts classical, education, pops, and community concerts with the esteemed orchestra. The 2026-27 season will see him conduct three performances of Handel’s Messiah and also make his subscription debut with the symphony in a program of music by Dvořák, Richard Strauss, and Sam Wu. Summer 2026 saw him lead the CSYO on a tour through Europe, the orchestra’s first international tour in over 20 years. In the pops repertoire, Miller has conducted programs with legendary bands including The Beach Boys, Tower of Power, and Guster, led holiday pops programs, and conducted Dolly Parton’s “Threads: My songs in Symphony.
Together with flutist Michael Tabak, Miller co-founded the Apollo Ensemble of Boston in 2018. Under Miller’s leadership, Apollo evolved quickly from a small chamber orchestra into a full orchestra with extensive programming. Miller has since conducted Apollo in over 40 concert cycles in venues throughout the Greater Boston Area, collaborating with world-class soloists and living composers. From 2022 until 2024, Miller served as the Principal Conductor of Upbeat New Hampshire, an El Sistema USA member program. While there, Miller established an honors chamber music program and an annual week-long conducting workshop with a professional ensemble.
An active conductor of opera and oratorio, Miller conducted Festival Theater Hudson‘s inaugural performance: a staged production of Wagner’s Die Walküre (Act I) and Ittai Shapira’s Magyar in 2021 and co-conducted a production of Philip Glass’ La Belle et la Bête, at the University of Houston’s Moores Opera Center in 2022. Between 2016 and 2019, Miller led the Harvard Early Music Society in several premieres of operatic works including the Boston premiere of J.A. Hasse’s Alcide al Bivio, the North American premiere of Telemann’s 1745 Johannespassion, and the North American premiere of J.A. Hasse’s Sanctus Petrus et Sancta Maria Magdalena. Miller has also conducted performances of operas by Gluck, Stravinsky, William Grant Still, and Gilbert & Sullivan. Miller served as Assistant Conductor on a production of West Side Story – a collaboration between Opera Columbus, BalletMet, CAPA, and the Columbus Symphony – in 2025, as Assistant Conductor and Chorus Master on a production of La Traviata with Opera Columbus in 2026, and as the Assistant Conductor of Opera Saratoga in summer 2020.
A distinguished pianist and cellist, Miller has performed solo recitals in the United States and in Europe on both instruments and has served as a vocal coach and rehearsal pianist for many operatic productions. He holds degrees from Harvard University (A.B. in Music, summa cum laude) and the University of Michigan (M.M. in Orchestral Conducting) and completed his postgraduate studies at the University for Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. Miller’s teachers and mentors include Mark Stringer, Scott Yoo, Kenneth Kiesler, Federico Cortese, and his father, David Alan Miller. Biography