Cassandra Miller receives the Kunstpreis Berlin
“Cassandra Miller has been awarded the 2025 Kunstpreis Berlin (music) by the Akademie der Künste. The award will be presented in a ceremony on 18 March. The Kunstpreis Berlin – Jubilee Foundation 1848/1948 was founded by the Berlin Senate in 1948 in memory of the March Revolution of 1848. Since 1971, it has been awarded by the Academy of Arts on behalf of the state. The award for artists is intended to emphasize the special importance of the arts for a free society.
In November 2024 Miller received her first Ivor Novello for The City, Full of People, a piece for mixed choir commissioned by Éamonn Quinn of Louth Contemporary Music Society, in the Choral Composition category. In 2021 she received one of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s 2021 Awards for Artists, and has twice received the Jules-Léger Prize for New Chamber Music, Canada’s highest recognition for composition—for Bel Canto in 2011 and About Bach in 2016.
On 30 January Miller’s guitar concerto Chanter was shortlisted for a Royal Philharmonic Society Award in the Chamber-Scale Composition category. The 20-minute piece, written for Sean Shibe, was co-commissioned by Dunedin Consort (supported by John Ellerman Foundation), Barbican Centre, Saffron Hall, Australian Chamber Orchestra, and Cheltenham Music Festival. The RPS Awards ceremony is on 6 March.
Miller’s Perfect Offering, an 18-minute work for flute, clarinet, piano, and string quartet, made its Belgian debut with Koen Kessels and HERMES ensemble in Wijnegem on 30 January. Commenting on the world premiere recording of the piece from Explore Ensemble in 2023, Alex Ross wrote: “If anyone in these disenchanting days is writing music more brazenly beautiful than Cassandra Miller’s, I do not know the name”. In February Manchester Collective tour Miller’s string quartet Leaving to Leeds, Manchester, and the Southbank Centre; 18 February sees a performance of Miller’s Traveller Song (2016 rev. 2018), 21-minute work for ensemble of seven or eight players and tape, scored for clarinet, piano four hands, accordion, guitar, violin, and cello, at Café Oto from Plus-Minus Ensemble.”
