Miller, Robert

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Miller, Robert

Miller, Robert, American pianist and lawyer; b. N.Y, Dec. 5, 1930; d. Bronxville, N.Y., Nov. 30, 1981. He studied piano with Mathilde McKinney and Abbey Simon, then enrolled at Princeton Univ., where he took classes in composition with Babbitt and Cone. graduating in 1952; also studied jurisprudence at Columbia Univ. Law School, graduating in 1957. He was admitted to the bar in 1958 and became a practicing Wall Street lawyer, and among his clients were several composers. As a pianist, he made his debut in Carnegie Hall in N.Y. in 1957. He had a fairly active, though unhappily brief, career as a recitalist, excelling particularly in ultramodern music. He gave the first performance in N.Y. in 1980 of a piano concerto by John Harbison, and George Crumb wrote his Makrokosmos (vol. II) for him.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire

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