The Violin Channel recently caught up with American composer Miles Walter after his most recent recital with Classeek in Switzerland.

We ask him about his compositional processes and his experience with Classeek's Ambassador Programme, which he joined as their open application winner.

 

Can you share your journey towards becoming a composer?

I can try! I like your phrase “journey toward becoming” a composer, as one’s always learning new things and setting out afresh. It’s one of the joys (and challenges) of the vocation.

My earliest childhood dream was to be a composer but I danced around it for a long time. Age 5- 12 I wrote a lot of pieces for myself and others (family; friends & elementary school classmates learning instruments) but once I became really serious about piano, it took a while before I felt comfortable calling myself “a composer.” (This is a big problem in classical music pedagogy, but that’s a separate topic.) I grew up in Keene, a sleepy, picturesque town in New Hampshire. I had a caring and devoted piano mentor there, who is the reason I can seriously play—and in the summers, I played chamber music one township over, at the wonderful Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music. But beyond Apple Hill, I had very little involvement with classical music institutions till I left for college. And by then, I’d quietly shelved the dream of being a composer.

I also had (and have) a lot of other interests besides music. It was one of these which finally pulled me back. During college, working as an actor at a summer stock theatre, I was called upon to write some last-minute music, nothing fancy, for one of our children’s productions. I ended up writing music for the theatre all summer. When I returned to Yale in the fall, I used that music to enroll in the undergrad composition seminar.

That’s how I had my first semester of composition lessons, the fall I turned 21. After that, I dropped the Math major I’d been working on. I worked like crazy to catch up on all the post-1945 music I’d never heard, got a fellowship to stay on at the Yale School of Music for a Masters, and at 24 I was teaching undergrads their first composition lessons, on the other side of the program which had given me my first.

So that’s how I found my way back to my earliest dream, after I thought I’d missed my chance. After that, it’s been a pretty normal pathway. I’m now doing graduate work with George Benjamin. Any time I feel like I’m coming to something late, or on the wrong timeline, George likes to remind me, “there are no rules.”

Mendelssohn wrote his most cracklingly alive works in his teens; Carter cut his gems even clearer after his hundredth birthday. I think George understands both sides: as a young person, he was a once-in-a-generation prodigy, but he also experienced artistic rebirth in his mid-40s, when he began writing those totally matchless operas of his. I’ve recently gotten to know the fantastic music of Zoë Martlew, who’s super in-demand now in her second career as a composer, on top of her vibrant life as a cellist. And George Lewis, doubtless among our most brilliant minds now working in music, came to the mantle of “composer” gradually, via his work, beginning in the early 80s, building rule-based AI systems to improvise with humans. We live in a time of countless pathways to being a composer. There are no rules.

 

What are your main sources of inspiration?

Texts, sounds, juxtapositions of ideas, juxtapositions of sounds. I also did ballet starting age 10, and danced through college—honestly, that’s a big part of it, I move a lot while writing. I look like a bit of a lunatic.

 

How do you typically approach commissioned works? Do you enjoy having specific guidelines, or do you prefer complete creative freedom?

Generally, a concert commission stipulates only the instrumentation and the length, no more. When you’re writing for friends or people who want to work with you, chatting and spending time can of course be fruitful for generating ideas. And in any sort of theatrical or collaborative multimedia work, there’s a lot of conversation among the creative team; this certainly might involve suggestions and guidelines from the presenter.

I don’t have any set personal rules. But if I’m starting from a truly blank canvas (the typical situation with an instrumental commission) I often begin by meditating on some unfinished problem in the last piece I wrote: some cast-off material, some incomplete exploration of a sound, or a way of moving. At the end of a piece, there’s always a lot of wood-chippings left on the floor. I like looking to these to get started on the next piece. It keeps me moving forward, into new challenges and considerations, which I like.

 

Could you walk us through your composition process?

It’s never easy! Usually: I start to slowly amass ideas, and these start to dictate form, which in turn suggests further content, which bolsters form, and this feedback loop sort of accelerates me along, and I make connections quicker and quicker and eventually spend some exhilarating and relatively sleepless weeks wrestling it into final shape. I do as much of the work as I can on paper, as my imagination is much freer there, and my formal guesses better. Eventually, the computer has to enter. But regardless of mechanics, there are always dead-ends, and incorrect gambits, and sometimes you need to let yourself throw away weeks of work for the good of the piece. (The time to properly agonize about all of this is a luxury of dubious value.)

Finally there’s this kind of beautiful thing, where the premiere’s done, and you start to get to live with the new piece—and the piece is finally no longer something you’re tearing your hair over—instead it gradually fades into a fond old gift, left to you by someone you used to be quite close with. And you get to keep it for years and years.

 

Were there any teachers or mentors who had a significant impact on your development?

So many — far too many to name all of them here. My mother, my first music teacher, brought the piano to me. Vladimir Odinokikh and many Apple Hill coaches and peers nurtured me musically through my childhood. Wei-Yi Yang, Michael Friedmann, and Katherine Balch met me where I was in college, and helped guide me to a path. Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, David Lang, and Christopher Theofanidis all offered invaluable lessons in grad school, as did Stephen Hartke and Derek Bermel at Aspen and Bowdoin. Dan Sedgwick, Eli Greenhoe, Lee Dionne, and Prach Boondiskulchok, entering my life at different times, have been important friends, colleagues, and sources of inspiration. Recently, Claudio Martínez Mehner has guided me in redrawing my approach to the piano and to musical communication. And it’s been wonderful to meet, learn from, and begin to pick the brains of other longstanding musical heroes of mine, notably Unsuk Chin. Finally — almost goes without saying — studying with George Benjamin has been the musical apprenticeship of my lifetime.

 

What excites you most about the upcoming 2025–2026 season?

I’ve got a three-minute piece—short, but dense and growing—which will be workshopped by the London Symphony Orchestra in March (’26). And I’ve got a new piano trio which Linos Trio will premiere at their festival in September (’25) in Köln.

There’s also a duo for vibraphone and marimba, Vaudeville, which I finished some months ago and I’ll hear for the first time this season. I’ve also got this new (2024) Fantasy, which I wrote for the extraordinary Bertrand Chamayou, but haven’t yet played myself. I’m very excited to start playing that around this year.

 

How has your experience been working with Classeek?

The team at Classeek has been warm and kind — bringing me and my peers perspective, on issues of career and practice, that’s fresh, focused, and professional. The Career Lab at the QEMC was one highlight of the program, and — needless to say —

I’m grateful to have had the space and the support to curate a show featuring music of others and music of mine, including a world premiere. Dedicated time and space to join friends and make friends in bringing a new work to life, that’s what we do this for.

 

Do you have a favorite memory from this experience that you'll always carry with you?

Sharing some terrific meals in Aubonne with the Classeek team and the small community of four I had the privilege to bring in, from their busy travels, to join me in this program. In general, feeling a part of the larger Classeek community, and getting to bring in others. Classeek works to lift young musicians up, and helps us lift each other up.

 

Quickly emerging as a leading young American composer, Miles’s works for orchestra, voice, chamber ensembles, and solo piano have been commissioned and performed in a growing number of countries around the world, including the U.S.A, the U.K, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, the Czech Republic, and Australia.

His Fantasy for piano solo (2024), a half-hour work commissioned by the Venice Biennale for Bertrand Chamayou, was recently praised as “one of the most refreshing piano compositions one has heard in recent times…. Don't forget this name.”

Miles's music has been commissioned and performed by groups including the London Symphony Orchestra, Orpheus Sinfonia, Linos Trio, Yale Percussion Group, and Aspen Chamber Symphony, and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and RAI Radio 3. A versatile performer and devoted chamber musician, he is a present participant in OCM at IMS Prussia Cove, and has premiered over fifty new works.

Twice graduated from Yale (BA, MM), Miles holds a piano degree from the Musik-Akademie Basel under Claudio Martínez Mehner, and is currently pursuing his PhD with Sir George Benjamin.