Glenn Miller

Glenn Miller’s career embraces activities as a church musician, organist, conductor, and singer. He is a graduate of Westminster Choir College and the University of Oklahoma, where his degrees are in church music/organ and choral conducting respectively. As a church musician, he most notably served as Director of Music and Organist at Kirk in the Hills, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan for twenty-three years, where he developed its nationally recognized music ministry, directing its professional adult choir and leading a Royal School of Church Music choral program for its boys’ and girls’ choirs. In addition, he developed extensive educational events and a prominent concert series, developed a close relationship with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, including founding the Orchestra’s Neighborhood Concert Series, and served as host to the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival.

His close association with the King’s College RSCMA Choristers’ Training Course, the largest of its kind in America and based at St Stephen’s Pro-Cathedral, Wilkes Barre, PA, has spanned the entire history of the Course, serving in both leadership and musical positions. Under his leadership the Course has had as its principal music directors leading figures from both England and the United States as well has fostered rising young talents. Amongst those young talents were Katie Burk Webb and her sister Maggie Burk, who initially came to the Course as choristers in their youth but over time grew into various leadership capacities and resulted in friendships that have now spanned nearly two decades. For his services to the RSCMA he was awarded the degree of HonRSCM in 2018 at Salisbury Cathedral.

In addition to his activities as a church musician, he has enjoyed a celebrated career as a professional singer internationally and is in great demand because of his unique basso profundo/oktavist voice, the rarest of all voice parts. He has performed and toured regularly and has made numerous recordings (many of which can be found on YouTube) with various ensembles, including Clarion (NYC), Cappella Romana (Portland), the St Tikhon’s Chamber Choir (PA), the Choir of St Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, Conspirare (Austin), the Yale Choral Artists and the Yale Schola Cantorum, Audivi, the Choir of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, and the Robert Shaw Festival Singers.

Amongst his many recordings with these ensembles are five recordings of the Rachmaninov Vespers, a work which has been the centerpiece of his career since he first recorded it with the Robert Shaw Festival Singers under the direction of Mr Shaw. His voice is especially suited, though not limited to, music of the Orthodox tradition, and in 2014 the recording he made of a basso profundo concerto (the first time it had been recorded with its original ending) with Conspirare in a recording of music of this tradition was awarded a Grammy for Best Choral Performance. Numerous solo and choral compositions have been composed for his voice, most recently a setting of the Song of Simeon by Benedict Sheehan, the first of its kind in English, recorded in 2021 with the St Tikhon’s Chamber Choir and which will receive its premiere in New York City later this year. His recording of this piece captured the attention of the British organ and choir publication Choir and Organ, resulting in a feature article about his career in it April 2022 edition.

As artist in residence at Trinity he looks forward to being a part of the Cathedral’s highly acclaimed music ministry. He is most grateful to Dr Webb for this opportunity to not only be of support to her as she begins her ministry building on the association that began on the RSCMA course in Wilkes Barre many years ago, but to be afforded this capstone to his career as a church musician.