Conductor Tania Miller helps children to follow their dreams via music

Tania Miller has been a music director; she has led opera; she has appeared with orchestras on three continents. But the hardest task she has as a conductor is putting together a good children’s concert.

She will do it again on Feb. 11, when the Chicago Symphony presents “In Pursuit of Dreams,” a CSO for Kids concert built around works by Jessie Montgomery, the CSO’s Mead Composer-in-Residence.

Creating a children’s concert from scratch is “something I enjoy and something I believe in,” Miller said. “It takes more time, but I like the variety, and I wouldn’t feel good about myself if I didn’t do something like this from time to time.  I’m thinking so much about introducing music to young people, perhaps for the first time. There’s an enormous variety of emotional possibilities to be moved by the experience.”

During her 14 years as music director of the Victoria Symphony in British Columbia, Miller picked up the knack of doing children’s concerts. It’s often a task that is passed off to an assistant conductor, but “the music director should encompass everything that’s important about music in the community,” she said. “Many people segregate the experience of adult classical concerts, but it’s important to embrace educational concerts.”

The experience is “a challenge some conductors don’t want,” she said, but “I create a script, and I memorize it, and I act. There’s a lot of interaction between myself and the kids. I’ve learned to enjoy it, and it’s very rewarding.”

A children’s concert uses short excerpts of multiple pieces, with explanatory narration. For this event, Miller was asked to “use Jessie [Montgomery] as a symbol for creative possibilities, that no matter what your dreams are, you can pursue them.” The concert will tell the story of Montgomery’s childhood aspirations and adult achievements. “There’s lots of music and ideas and people who have stories to tell,” Miller said. “I hope that every kid in the room sees themselves in Jessie Montgomery.”

Making the connection with her audience is far from automatic. “When I walk on, and there’s 2,000 kids in the audience, and there’s such energy exploding everywhere, I wonder how it will all be contained,” she said. But the music channels the energy. If the orchestra plays selections from “Star Wars,” it’s guaranteed to get a scream, and in a quiet piece, she can feel the hush. But it’s important to keep each piece short and to vary the mood. “You have to keep the strand of energy taut,” she said. “It can go up or down, but it can’t go off.”

For any family concert, Miller has to “use a vast repertoire to find those evocative pieces that will carry it through from beginning to end.” But going through Montgomery’s catalog to find kid-friendly music was a challenge. She chose Records from a Vanished City, in part because the piece tells a story of Montgomery’s childhood in New York and the genres of music she heard growing up. It’s also strongly rhythmic and has instrumental solos that kids can enjoy.

A children’s concert typically gets one rehearsal, so time has to be used efficiently. Like most, the upcoming program will include excerpts from standards, including Dvorak’s New World Symphony and Copland’s Appalachian Spring. Miller knows her audience probably won’t recognize those classical greatest hits, “but they have true openness, including openness to modern pieces,” she said. “I think Jessie’s music will speak directly to them.”

And the experience of meeting a living composer who happens to be female will broaden children’s horizons even more. “Jessie is an extraordinary composer, and it’s incredible to have a show featuring her music,” Miller said. “Kids can meet her and understand that there’s this person who is real to them.”