Paul Phillips
Ellen Gilson Voth
Heidi Johanna Miller

PAUL PHILLIPS
Music Director and Conductor

PAUL PHILLIPS is an award-winning conductor, composer and author whose talents encompass a wide range of musical activities. Acclaimed as a conductor “who was born to stand on a podium,” his honors include 1st Prize in the NOS International Conductors Course in Holland, 1st Prize in the Wiener Meisterkurse Conductors Course in Vienna, selection for the Exxon/Arts Endowment Conductors Program, and receiving nine ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music with three different orchestras. He has conducted over 60 orchestras, opera and ballet companies worldwide, including the San Francisco Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Rhode Island Philharmonic, Boston Academy of Music, Opera Providence, Festival Ballet Providence, Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra and Iceland Symphony Orchestra, with which he recorded two compact discs. Recent guest-conducting engagements include Madama Butterfly with Commonwealth Opera, Don Giovanni with Brown Summer Opera, a performance in Portugal with the Braga Chamber Orchestra and Chorus, and concerts with the Massachusetts and Vermont All-State Orchestras.

As Music Director since 1994, Phillips has led the Pioneer Valley Symphony and Chorus to new artistic heights, securing its position as one of the preeminent musical organizations in western Massachusetts. He has spearheaded collaborative projects with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Hampshire Choral Society, Old Deerfield Productions, Amherst Ballet, glass artist Josh Simpson, and other artists and arts organizations throughout the region, and led the PVS in memorable performances of Beethoven’s Ninth, Mahler’s Second and Fifth Symphonies, the Verdi Requiem, The Rite of Spring, The Planets, Carmina Burana and Ellis Island: The Dream of America. Under his leadership, the PVS has won an ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, been profiled twice in Symphony Magazine, been recorded on the Living with the Classics CD box set produced by Arizona University Recordings, and been selected to participate in the national Ford Made in America Project.

In his principal position as Director of Orchestras and Chamber Music at Brown University, he has led Brown University Orchestra in performances with such illustrious soloists as Itzhak Perlman, Joseph Kalichstein, Christopher O’Riley and the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Phillips and the Brown Orchestra have performed in New York at Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall as well as in Boston, Cambridge, Montreal, Shanghai and Beijing. In 2009, the Brown University Orchestra won its seventh ASCAP Award under his leadership.

With a conducting repertoire of over 900 works, Phillips has conducted much of the standard repertoire, including opera and musical theatre ranging from The Magic Flute to Sweeney Todd. He enjoys jazz and has led concerts featuring Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Charles, Tony Bennett and other popular artists. A strong believer in the importance of music in the lives of young people, he has worked extensively with student musicians and audiences as Youth Concert Conductor of the Maryland Symphony for fourteen years and as conductor of numerous youth and All-State orchestras. In collaboration with Bill Harley, the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, he has composed and arranged pieces for youth concerts that are performed by orchestras throughout the country.

After attending the Eastman School of Music as a composition-piano double major, Phillips graduated cum laude in music from Columbia University, later earning graduate degrees in composition and conducting from Columbia and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, respectively. He pursued additional studies at the Salzburg “Mozarteum”, Académie internationale d'été in Nice, Eastman, Music Academy of the West, Aspen and Tanglewood. His conducting teachers include Kurt Masur, Gunther Schuller and Leonard Bernstein. After beginning his career at the Frankfurt Opera and Stadttheater Lüneburg in Germany, he returned to the US, assuming conducting posts in Greensboro and Savannah before arriving at Brown University in 1989.

Apart from conducting, Phillips is also an accomplished composer, pianist and author. His music has been performed internationally and received many prizes, including awards from the New England String Ensemble, American Music Center and ASCAP. His piano music is featured in the upcoming motion picture Hachiko, directed by Lasse Hallström and starring Richard Gere. Recent works include War Music and War Music Suite (premiered in 2009 by the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra); A/B (2007), a composition for actor and chamber ensemble premiered at the 2007 FirstWorksProv Festival; and Battle-Pieces, a song cycle on poems by Herman Melville. As a pianist, he has performed at the Mohawk Trail Concerts, Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Carnegie Recital Hall and Lincoln Center, and recorded for film and television.

Considered the leading authority on the music of composer-novelist Anthony Burgess, Phillips is a featured commentator in the BBC television documentary The Burgess Variations and the author of writings published in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Portraits of the Artist in A Clockwork Orange, and Anthony Burgess and Modernity. His book A Clockwork Counterpoint: The Music and Literature of Anthony Burgess is scheduled to be published in 2010 by Manchester University Press.

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ELLEN GILSON VOTH
Chorus Director

Active as a choral conductor, educator, composer and pianist, Ellen Gilson Voth is delighted to join the artistic staff of the Pioneer Valley Symphony Chorus. She has served on the music faculty of Gordon College in Wenham, Mass. and Ithaca College in Ithaca, N.Y., and as choral director at Perkiomen Valley High School in Collegeville, Pa.
In addition, Dr. Voth has served on the faculty of the Masterworks Festival in Winona Lake, Ind. and the Csehy Summer School of Music in Langhorne, Pa.

Her conducting with community choirs includes her work as Director of the Farmington Valley Chorale based in Simsbury, Conn., conductor of the Gordon College Symphonic Chorale, assistant conductor of the New Haven Chorale, and conductor of the Cambiata Choir with the Connecticut Children’s Chorus. She has been active as a guest conductor for choral festivals and as an adjudicator in the region, and she has served on the executive board of Connecticut Chapter of the American Choir Directors Association.
As a composer, Dr. Voth’s works are published by Colla Voce, ECS Publishing, and Oxford University Press. She has been commissioned by the Central Bucks West High School in Doylestown, Pa.; the New Haven Chorale in New Haven, Conn.; the Children’s Aid Society Chorus in New York City; and the Greater Middletown Chorale in Middletown, Conn.
Her composition "Wind of the Spirit" was premiered by the Princeton Singers at Lehigh University in June 2008, and recently she was a semi-finalist in the 2009 Call for Scores sponsored by the Choral Arts Ensemble of Rochester, Minn.

Dr. Voth received her doctoral degree (DMA) at The Hartt School, University of Hartford (Conn.), where she was the recipient of the Regent’s Honor award for graduate students. Her master’s degree (MM) is from Westminster Choir College of Rider University (N.J.) and her bachelor’s degree (BME magna cum laude) is from Wheaton College Conservatory of Music (Ill.).
Currently she is a senior lecturer, director of choirs and music coordinator at Western New England College in Springfield, Mass.

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HEIDI JOHANNA MILLER
Assistant Conductor

Originally from Wisconsin Rapids, Wisc., Heidi Johanna Miller earned the DMA degree in conducting from the University of Minnesota, the MM degree in conducting from Ithaca College, and the BM degree in music education and performance from the University of Minnesota. She has led numerous instrumental and vocal ensembles and chamber ensembles and has performed as a soprano specializing in contemporary and early music. 
In 2006 Dr. Miller co-founded the Sapphire Chamber Consort, a professional instrumental and vocal chamber ensemble based in Minneapolis, Minn., for which she served as artistic director through 2009.
For her research on the music of Steven Stucky, in 2008 Dr. Miller was awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship from the University of Minnesota where she also served as conductor of the North Star Band during the 2008–2009 season.
From 2005 to 2006 she served on the conducting and music education faculties at Ithaca College where she conducted the Campus Band and taught conducting and music education. Before moving to New York, for three years she taught instrumental music at Spring Lake Park High School (Minn.) where she created a private lesson program and started a local solo and ensemble festival.
An advocate for new music, Dr. Miller has guided world première performances of works by Stephen Hartke, Keir Neuringer, Carl Schroeder, James Patrick Miller, and Dawn Lenore Sonntag. In addition, her ensembles’ performances have been noted by composers Karel Husa, Steven Stucky, and Dana Wilson. Ms. Miller’s professional mentors include Craig Kirchhoff, Stephen Peterson, Kathy Romey, and Mark Russell Smith.
Also active as a performer, Miller has studied voice with Thom Baker and John de Haan. She has been a member of the Minnesota Chorale, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra Anniversary Chorale, and the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra.

She has also been professionally affiliated with the American Choral Directors Association, the Music Educators National Conference, the Minnesota Music Educators Association, the New York State Music Educators Association, the College Band Directors National Association, and the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles.

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