She transferred to the Juilliard School in New York City, where she received her bachelor's degree, then continued her studies with the Juilliard Opera Center.[1]
Miller's major teachers during her education were Mary Ellen Schauber, Dan Pressley, Josepha Gayer, and Cynthia Hoffmann, who she studied with at The Juilliard School.
Career
As a winner of the Joy In Singing Award,[2] Miller made her New York City recital debut in the autumn of 1998. The program included songs by Barber, Montsalvatge, Debussy, Griffes and Wolf, and was reviewed in The New York Times by Paul Griffiths.[3]
She was also one of five winners of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 1999, where she performed "Martern aller Arten" from Die Entführung aus dem Serail and "Ain't it a Pretty Night?" from Carlisle Floyd's Susannah with the orchestra conducted by Edoardo Muller, in a performance that The New York Times described as proving "her agility, thrust and command of intonation', with a voice that is "strong and brilliant".[4]
She subsequently appeared with the Opera Orchestra of New York, New York City Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, the Minnesota Opera, the Minnesota Orchestra, Opéra de Montréal, Orlando Opera, Kentucky Opera, Syracuse Opera, Eugene Opera, San Francisco Opera's Merola Program, and Wolf Trap Opera in a variety of leading soprano roles including Mozart's Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte), Donna Anna and Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Konstanze (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Countess Almaviva (The Marriage of Figaro), Violetta (La traviata), Desdemona (Otello), Musetta (La bohème), Marguerite (Faust), Rosalinda (Die Fledermaus), Euridice (Orfeo ed Euridice), Laurie (The Tender Land), and the title role in Susannah.
Miller completed several residencies with the Marilyn Horne Foundation, the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival and the Wolf Trap Foundation, which combined performing and outreach,[5] and in 2008 won both the George London/Kirsten Flagstad Award sponsored by The New York Community Trust and the George London Foundation Vienna Prize.[6]
She has also premiered numerous other works, including pieces by Thomas Cipullo, Christopher Berg, and Russell Platt. At her 2002 recital at Merkin Concert Hall, she performed a group of Richard Strauss songs that opened with "Das Rosenband" (Op. 36, No. 1), and also included "Meinem Kinde" (Op. 37, No. 3) and "Ständchen" (Op. 17, No. 2) as well as Poulenc's Trois Poèmes de Louise de Vilmorin and Métamorphoses, Debussy's early Proses Lyriques, and Beaser's Four Dickinson Songs. The New York Times review described Miller as "an agreeably flexible interpreter" with "considerable communicative powers" who sang "with a combination of gracefulness and energy that got to the core of the music she offered".[15]
