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Anthime Miller got his instrument in 2006 when their father, a FedEx courier, mentioned to one of his customers he was looking for a fine cello for his 16-year-old son.
The customer, Michael Hagen of South Glens Falls, said he had an old cello in his closet that had belonged his father, who was a cellist in Germany.
“This cello was from the early 1700s. It is very precious, very unique,” Miller said.
Miller describes themselves as a queerdo — queer and weird — and goes by “they/them.”
On Tuesday, they were sitting up straight in the front row of pews in Christ Church United Methodist in Glens Falls, talking about their busy and diverse musical career, gesturing with their hands, unfolding their multiway tank top so it transformed into a tight black dress pulled down over their black pants, shifting around with a restless energy that focused, after I asked them to play something, into music that poured out from the instrument at the touch of their bow.
It was three days before their cello, voice and organ performance, which takes place in the church Friday at 7 p.m. The concert is a fundraiser for the church and a return for Miller on his 36th birthday to the community that nurtured their talent and continues to support and inspire them.
They’re living in New York now, performing, teaching and working on a score for an opera called “Lady M” that sets “Macbeth” to music but with the focus on Lady Macbeth.
They learned to think big in the performing arts community here that “was absolutely fundamental to my and so many young people’s creative lives,” Miller said.
In 2015, they moved back from New York to Glens Falls for four years, working with local musicians in the vocal group The Resolutions, and with the group’s music director, Catherine Reid, in a collaborative partnership that is ongoing.
While it’s common for musicians to collaborate, it’s uncommon for composers to work well together on musical scores, but Miller and Catherine manage it, Miller said.
Miller lives now in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and works in a studio in the Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass (DUMBO) neighborhood in Brooklyn.
The instrument discovered that day in Michael Hagen’s closet was crafted about 300 years ago in a larger form known as a bassetto but cut down to cello size in 1898 in Odessa.
Miller practiced and performed with it until early this summer when, after a gig, the strap broke as they were loading it into a car, the case fell onto the pavement and the neck came undone.
Miller is raising money for repairs, which are complicated and expensive because of the instrument’s age. Meanwhile, they’re renting a cello made in 1984 in England by Lionel Hepplewhite.
They’ve raised $7,000 toward the $15,000 cost of the Hepplewhite cello, which they intend to buy, and the $10,000 cost of having the older instrument repaired and retrofitted in a third incarnation as a baroque cello.
Subtle structural differences and gut instead of steel strings are said to give the baroque cello an especially warm, mellow sound.
Miller and I both had somewhere to be after our talk on Tuesday, but as Miller played a quick excerpt from his program on the cello, then the organ, I regretted neither of us had the time for more.
Here is a video of Miller discussing cello technicalities and playing bits of longer pieces they’ll perform Friday:
The concert begins at 7 p.m. Friday in Christ Church United Methodist, 54 Bay St., with tickets starting at $15. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and tickets will be available at the door.
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