Dr. Chip Miller grew up in a musical family in Richmond, Virginia—his mother a pianist, singer, and oboist; his father a clarinetist who met her in music school. He began studying piano with his mother, then spent six summers as a student at Interlochen, leaving a still-unbroken record as a four-time concerto winner. He started tuning pianos as a high schooler in 1992, found a career as a resident technician in New York City, and eventually became the primary piano caretaker at the Interlochen Center for the Arts—the same campus where he had once performed as a student.
At age eleven, Chip was invited to perform Beethoven's First Piano Concerto (I) with the Williamsburg Symphony in Virginia - five times - for the young person's orchestra showcase. That year, he became the highest-ranked American in his age group at the Young Keyboard Artists Association internaional competition. At fifteen, he was one of eight pianists selected across Virginia to perform on Vladimir Horowitz's personal piano after it went on tour following Horowitz's death.
"Those hours listening—Rubinstein, Van Cliburn, and Horowitz on my mother's cassette player—and then suddenly playing Horowitz's actual piano. That changed how I heard everything."
He went on to win eight concerto competitions as a student and performed twice with the World Youth Symphony Orchestra at Kresge Auditorium at Interlochen—a 3,917-seat venue where he had watched his idols perform as a child.
By age twenty, he had been a finalist at the Stravinsky International Competition, and won the regionals of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) national competition twice. It was at the MTNA nationals that Nelita True, one of the world's foremost piano pedagogues, invited him to study with her at the Eastman School of Music.
His doctoral dissertation at the University of Houston, The Effects of Unequal Temperament on Chopin's Mazurkas, required compiling 432 recordings and samples of historical tuning systems—meantone, Werckmeister, Kirnberger, and others—to analyze how the same piece sounds profoundly different depending on the temperament of the tuning. It is available through the University of Houston library, and additional materials are available at unequaltemperament.com. That deep listening also contributes to how he tunes today.
At the Interlochen Center for the Arts, he served as primary caretaker for Van Cliburn's personal piano, maintained NPR's Studio A, and cared for hundreds of instruments supporting thousands of festival performances each season. In New York City, he worked with the Museum of Modern Art, the Manhattan School of Music, Chez Josephine, and the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, among others.
Chip and his wife Katie first came to Albuquerque for a tango conference. They met Fred Sturm and Terri Reck, who introduced them to Jean-Luc Matton—Albuquerque's most trusted piano technician for 30 years. When Jean-Luc retired to France, Chip stepped in to continue caring for his clients. That continuity of trust is central to how Chip approaches his practice here.
Today he splits his time between his university appointment at UNM, a busy private practice serving homes, churches, schools, and concert venues across New Mexico, and Argentine tango dancing with Katie at Las Puertas. Their dog Apollo supervises everything.
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