Miranda Cuckson is known for her expressive playing of a remarkable range of music, from the newest creations to music of older eras. A distinctive soloist and collaborator, violinist and violist, she is internationally acclaimed by audiences and cultural writers, and performs at venues large and small, from casual spaces to concert halls. Those venues have included the Berlin Philharmonie, Teatro Colón, Suntory Hall, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Library of Congress, Miller Theatre, Guggenheim Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Cleveland Museum, Phillips Collection, Strathmore, Harvard University’s Fromm concerts, Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music, University of Chicago’s Contempo series, and the Ojai, Wien Modern, Grafenegg, Marlboro, Bard, Lincoln Center, West Cork, Bridgehampton, Portland, Music Mountain, LeGuessWho, Soundsofmusic Groningen, Sinus Ton, and Bodensee festivals.

Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas composed his Violin Concerto No. 2 (2017) for her, inspired by her performances of his violin piece “de terrae fine”. She premiered the concerto with three co-commissioning orchestras – the Suntory Festival and Tokyo Symphony with Ilan Volkov, the Staatsorchester Stuttgart with Sylvain Cambreling, and the Orchestra of the Casa da Música in Porto with Baldur Brönnimann – followed by performances in Austria at the Grafenegg Festival and with the Vienna Radio Symphony at the Musikverein.  She also recently gave the world premiere of Mexican composer Marcela Rodriguez’s Violin Concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico and Sylvain Gasançon. She gave the New York premiere of the Violin Concerto by Michael Hersch, with Ensemble Échappé and Jeffrey Milarsky. Her Carnegie Hall (Stern Auditorium) solo debut was in Walter Piston’s Concerto No. 1 with the American Symphony Orchestra.

While very dedicated to the Western classical repertoire, Miranda has also played countless concerts and premieres of new works and helped to bring new creations more to the center of concert life. Her ongoing involvement in older music includes most of the violin’s core classical repertoire, including the solo works of JS Bach and the ten Beethoven Sonatas. Drawing on her deeply felt perspective as a multiethnic American, Miranda works with composers and artists from many backgrounds. Those who have recently written works for her include Georg Friedrich Haas, Michael Hersch, Jason Eckardt, George Lewis, Wang Lu, Jeffrey Mumford, Dongryul Lee, Stewart Goodyear, Steve Lehman, Harold Meltzer, Ileana Perez Velasquez, Douglas Boyce, Reiko Füting, Diego Tedesco, Alex Stephenson, and Aida Shirazi. She has performed in concert with composer-performers Anthony Cheung, Huang Ruo, Vijay Iyer, Nina C. Young, Michael Hersch, and Philip Glass. In addition to supporting young artists, she has collaborated with celebrated figures including Dutilleux, Adams, Carter, Adès, Sciarrino, Boulez, Hyla, Mackey, Crumb, Lachenmann, Saariaho, Davidovsky, Hurel, Ran, Wyner, Murail, Wuorinen, Currier, Harbison, and Rzewski.

Miranda has released eleven albums, all highly praised. Her album of Nono’s “La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura” for violin and electronics (Urlicht), with Christopher Burns, was named a Best Recording of the year by the New York Times.  ECM Records released her album of Bartók, Lutoslawski, and Schnittke sonatas, with pianist Blair McMillen. In 2021, her live performance of the Ligeti Violin Concerto with Christian Baldini and the UCDavis Orchestra was released on Centaur Records. Her first album, in 2001, was the Ponce and Korngold concertos with the Czech National Symphony, (Centaur). Subsequently, she was awarded grants from the Copland Fund (four times in a row) to pursue her interest in 20th-century American music and record works by Ross Lee Finney, Donald Martino, and Ralph Shapey. Her other albums include the Roger Sessions solo Sonata and duos Elliott Carter and Jason Eckardt; “the wreckage of flowers” by Michael Hersch; “Melting the Darkness”, solo microtonal and electro-acoustic pieces by Xenakis, Haas, Bianchi, Rowe and more; and violin music by Wolpe, Carter and Ferneyhough, a recording that was praised by Brian Ferneyhough himself.  Her playing is featured on many composers’ albums, including those of Reiko Füting, Jeffrey Mumford, Philip Glass, Wang Lu, Jessica Meyer, Harold Meltzer, Dai Fujikura, Louis Karchin, Dave Soldier, Anna Weesner, David Dzubay, Jonathan Dawe, and Anthony Cheung.  

Since her student years, Miranda freelanced and worked with almost every group and music organization in New York City. She was a dedicated member of the Momenta String Quartet (2004-08), Argento Chamber Ensemble (2003-2011), American Contemporary Music Ensemble (2005-2010), Sequitur (2006-14), Composers Conference (2009-19), and counter)induction (2009-21). She was also part of the Phillips Camerata and several times a recitalist at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC. She is the founder/director of non-profit organization Nunc. At Brooklyn venue National Sawdust, she is a frequent performer and is on their artistic advisory council.

A member of the interdisciplinary collective AMOC, founded in 2017 by composer Matthew Aucoin and director Zack Winokur, Miranda has continually engaged with the various forms of art. In 2019, she was presented by National Sawdust’s multimedia Ferus Festival. She has performed the Stravinsky Duo Concertant at Brooklyn Academy of Music with the State Ballet of Georgia, Barber Violin Concerto with the touring New York City Ballet, and Stravinsky Violin Concerto with NYCB soloists at the Guggenheim Museum for the Balanchine centennial. She has also collaborated with the New York Choreographic Institute and New Chamber Ballet. With Chris Burns, she has performed Nono’s “La lontananza” a dozen times, exploring its spatial and theatrical concepts in a wide variety of settings.

She is part-time faculty at the Mannes School of Music at New School University, teaching violin and chamber music in the college and prep divisions. She has done residencies and given workshops and masterclasses – working with violinists, chamber musicians, and composers – at the Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, UC San Diego, UC Davis, Peabody Institute, Peabody Prep, Brown University, Williams College, Rice University, East Carolina University, Lawrence University, Hunter College, CUNY, Princeton University, Florida State, and more.

Miranda studied at The Juilliard School, starting age 9 in the Pre-College, through to earning her BM, MM, and DMA degrees. She was a CV Starr Fellow and won Juilliard’s Presser Award, as well as the Richard French Prize for her doctoral dissertation on American composer Ross Lee Finney, his violin works, life story, and folksong background. Her main teachers were Robert Mann, Dorothy DeLay, Felix Galimir, Shirley Givens, Fred Sherry, and the Juilliard Quartet.

Miranda has played and performed on the viola since 2010. Her instruments are a GB Guadaginini violin made in 1742, a 20th-century violin by Vittorio Bellarosa, and a viola made in 2008 by Jeffrey Robinson. Her bows are by Hill&Sons and Noel Burke.

A US citizen of Austrian (Czech-Slovak), English, and Taiwanese descent, she was born in Australia to composer Robert Cuckson and pianist May Yang Cuckson. She has resided in the US all her life. Cuckson is an Anglo-Saxon name, a variant spelling of Coxson and Cookson, and pronounced like the word “cook”.