Dr. Christopher J. Miller is a senior lecturer in music at Cornell University, where he directs the gamelan ensemble and steel band and teaches courses on the music of Indonesia and East Asia. He started his academic career studying music composition at the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. At the latter, he encountered both traditional Javanese gamelan and the innovative work of Indonesian composers such as Al Suwardi, Pande Made Sukerta, and I Wayan Sadra, setting him on a path that has combined composition, performance, and scholarly research with gamelan and Indonesia as a central focus.

Dr. Miller earned his PhD in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University, with a dissertation on contemporary art music in Indonesia. Presenting a broad overview, the study examines the traditionally-based work that initially inspired it and what can be termed Western-oriented. Most centrally, it concerns the cultural dynamics that have shaped the field and the individuals’ experiences, outlooks, and aspirations.

Dr. Miller’s publications include an article in a special issue of the journal Twentieth-Century Music on Global Musical Modernism, which he co-edited with Gavin Lee, and a chapter in the book “Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music,” which he co-edited with Andrew McGraw. This book project reflects Dr. Miller’s broadening concern with the full range of music in Indonesia, which animates his teaching at Cornell and drives his project as a Fulbright US Scholar to engage with Indonesian scholars and students of Indonesian music, hosted by Universitas Gadjah Mada.