Cassandra Miller is in the spotlight at the 2026 Festival d’Automne, with the focus including the French premiere of Dad Goes to the Mountain – with the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France – alongside national debuts of Three Songs – her latest creation for Quatuor Bozzini – Thanksong, and Traveller Song.
A single-movement work in four chapters, Dad Goes to the Mountain is dedicated to Miller’s late father. She writes,
My Dad was a mathematician, theoretical physicist, and expert conversationalist…In his old age, he developed vascular dementia which impacted his spatial awareness and short-term memory, but which left his personality largely intact. I experienced him in this state as someone becoming more and more himself—he could act only from his deepest instincts which were kind and gentle. When I compare photos of him at 70 and at 80, the older ones show a much lighter person. I feel he was somehow transfigured by the experience.
This transfiguration—and lightness—are the topics of this piece. It is about a general upward ascending, about forgetting (un-knowing), and about the fluidity of time. I imagine a mountain as the goal of my Dad’s transformation, as a symbol for the simplicity of spiritual awareness—and, in quite a leap, I pretend that he is greeted on the mountain by a wind band from the Andean heights of Peru.
This transfiguration—and lightness—are the topics of this piece. It is about a general upward ascending, about forgetting (un-knowing), and about the fluidity of time.
Tianyi Lu will conduct the work’s Canadian debut on 19 November, with Ludovic Morlot giving its Spanish premiere in January 2026; it receives its first UK performance from the BBC Philharmonic and John Storgårds in March 2026, as part of the orchestra’s season-long focus on Miller. It was commissioned by Brussels Philharmonic, BBC Radio 3, L'Auditori, Barcelona, Radio France, Festival d’Automne, and Orchestre symphonique de Montréal.
On 14 December Quatuor Bozzini – longstanding champions of Miller’s music – give the French premiere of Three Songs at the Église du Saint-Esprit de Paris. The first two movements of the 20-minute piece draw on French children’s rhymes. ‘Ange’ sees peacefully rocking gestures take on a yearning character, with a muted second violin set apart timbrally from the rest of the group. ‘Claire’, drawing on ‘À la claire fontaine’, a children’s song traditionally popular in Canada, has a lilting dance-like character, and is pizzicato almost throughout, until a tender coda. ‘Bella’ turns to the Mondine choirs of Italy’s Po Valley, in celebration of the female seasonal workers who tended the region’s rice paddies. Its material is developed from the revolutionary antifascist anthem Bella ciao.
On 4 October L'instant Donné and Juliet Fraser presented the French premieres of Miller’s Traveller Song and Thanksong at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. Traveller Song (2016 rev. 2018) is a 21-minute work for ensemble of seven or eight players and tape, scored for clarinet, piano four hands, accordion, guitar, violin, and cello. The tape element is a recording of Miller’s own voice – “caterwauling”, as she puts it – singing along to a Sicilian cart driver’s tune recorded by Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella. Traveller Song was premiered by Ensemble Plus-Minus at Café OTO as part of KammerKlang 2017, and their recording of it was first released on Songs About Singing, a 2017 portrait disc of Miller’s vocal music from all that dust.
Thanksong also draws on pre-existing music. The title of the 15-minute work references the ‘Heiliger Dankgesang’ from Beethoven’s op.132 string quartet, summoning the opening’s prayerful and inward mood. To compose Thanksong Miller sang along to the four individual parts of the quartet, many times in repetition, transforming the material into gentle pendulum-like repeated gestures. The quartet members play the music by ear (with the aid of simplified notation), listening in headphones to Miller’s voice – and the composition is held together by the pacing and breath of Juliet Fraser, as she sings Beethoven’s line as slowly and quietly as possible.