Carlos Miranda

Carlos Miranda (born Luis Carlos Miranda Cordal on 17 January 1945 in Santiago, Chile) is a Spanish‑Chilean composer, pianist, conductor and actor whose work spans contemporary dance, film and ceremonial music. After studying composition with Gustavo Becerra‑Schmidt and piano with Flora Guerra at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música, he moved to Italy where he assisted on Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema, gaining early film experience that would later inform his theatrical scores. Relocating to London on a British Council scholarship, Miranda earned a degree from the Royal College of Music, studying piano under Harry Platts, composition with John Lambert and conducting with Vernon Handley, before joining the Rambert Dance Company as resident pianist and composer from 1974 to 1978. During his tenure with Rambert he created the music for Cruel Garden (1977), a dance‑theatre work choreographed by Christopher Bruce and directed by Lindsay Kemp that dramatized the life of Federico García Lorca; the piece earned the Prix Italia for Music in 1982 and has been revived worldwide. His long‑standing collaboration with Lindsay Kemp produced scores for productions such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Mr. Punch’s Pantomime, Duende and The Big Parade, touring across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australia. Miranda also composed for Spanish independent cinema, providing soundtracks for Celestino Coronado’s Hamlet (1977) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1984), Manuel Huerga’s Gaudí (1988), Félix Rotaeta’s The Pleasure of Killing (1988) and Chatarra (1991). In 1992 he wrote and conducted the Parade of Nations music for the Barcelona Summer Olympics, and later contributed to the Seville Expo ‘92 video soundtrack. As an actor, Miranda appeared in films such as Velvet Goldmine (1998) as a pianist, The Feast of the Goat (2005) portraying Antonio Imbert Barrera, and The Promise (2016). His awards include multiple Special Awards at the Belgrade International Theatre Festival and the 1979 Krakow Film Festival prize for music. Throughout a career that continues to the present, Carlos Miranda remains a versatile figure bridging avant‑garde dance, cinematic scoring and on‑screen performance.