$15 Cover @ the Door / Start 8:15pm / Doors 7:45pm / Seated Show
Roger Clark Miller (Mission of Burma, The Anvil Orchestra, Trinary System, etc...) will perform six compositions from his new album on Cuneiform Records: "Eight Dream Interpretations for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble" (Gate-fold LP/CD). Michael Bierylo will open with a short set of modular synthesis. He has performed Modular Synthesis concerts nationally and internationally and is a long-time associate of Roger's.
Roger Clark Miller studied classical piano as a child, had his mind blown when the Beatles arrived in 6th grade, studied french horn in middle school, and began playing guitar in rock bands in 9th grade (1967). His father studied fish that live in the desert, and every summer from age 2 to 18 was spent in the western U.S. deserts collecting fish and comparing them to their fossil ancestors.
By 11th grade, backed by semi-formal training, he was able to blend his interest in rock music, 20th Century serious composition and improvisation into new hybrid forms with his first original rock band Sproton Layer. In those days he would see the MC5 in the afternoon and hear Stockhausen performed at the University of Michigan Music School at night. After high school, he studied composition and piano at CalArts and the University of Michigan. He developed his "Dream Interpretation" composition technique at Thomas Jefferson College in 1975.
In 1979 he co-formed the iconic post-punk rock band Mission of Burma in Boston, listed repeatedly as "highly influential".
Between 1983 and 2001, Miller's eclectic work covered prepared piano, chamber music composition, free-form improvisation, rock and more, often confusing followers with radical shifts in direction. In 1997 he joined the Alloy Orchestra (currently The Anvil Orchestra) as keyboardist and composer, a group which toured internationally with their original scores to silent films. Roger Ebert said " (Alloy Orchestra is) the best in the world at accompanying silent film".
From 2001-2015 Mission of Burma reformed and released four albums to critical acclaim. His guitar playing continued to develop, but he also released work of wide-ranging interests during this time period. Since 2011, his "classical" compositions have been performed at the New England Conservatory, Tufts University and elsewhere, often structured by natural phenomena such as rocks above the arctic circle in Norway, ice on Jupiter's moon Europa, vines on his Somerville, MA garage door, and dreams. At N.E.C.'s Jordan Hall in 2015, he was onstage playing electric guitar along with a large chamber ensemble including soprano and baritone singers for his setting of the Epic of Gilgamesh, "Scream, Gilgamesh, Scream."
In 2020, Miller's first art installation, "Transmuting the Prosaic", went up just in time to be shut down by Covid. It involved five of his Modified Vinyl works (his first of these, "POP Record/evolving", 1985, had previously been in galleries with Christian Marclay's work), and his film "The Davis Square Symphony", which translates traffic patterns into an orchestral score. This installation's second showing will be at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth, NH, the end of November 2022 to the end of January, 2023.
During this time, he created his "Dream Interpretations for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble", along with his new music for String Quartet (and two turn-tables). He also remains active in his rock band "Trinary System."
He has toured nationally and internationally since 1979 and has been reviewed in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Spin, Wired, Billboard Magazine and more.
His new album (Gatefold LP, CD, digital), "Eight Dream Interpretations for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble" will be released on the Cuneiform Label on Sept.1, 2022.
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