SATURDAY, JULY 5, 2025 | 8:00PM

Tower of Power

Elias Miller, Conductor

Tower of Power, band

For 57 years, Tower of Power has delivered the best in funk and soul music with hits like “You’re Still A Young Man,” “Down to The Nightclub,” “So Very Hard to Go,” and “What Is Hip?” They join the Columbus Symphony for a night that will have you on your feet and dancing under the downtown stars!

This evening's selections will be announced from the stage.

TOWER OF POWER

For 55 years, Tower of Power has delivered the best in funk and soul music. “We were a Soul band called The Motowns,” recalls Emilio Castillo. “Rocco was the bass player, I was there, and my brother was the drummer. I met 'Doc' Kupka back in 1968, and gave him an audition. He came in the band, and we eventually changed our name to the Tower of Power.” The reason for the band name change was that they had a specific goal in mind. 

East Bay Grease defined their sound and landed them with Warner Brothers. Bump City, their 1972 debut for the label, was a hit on both the Billboard 200 and the R&B Albums chart, and netted them the hits “You’re Still A Young Man” and “Down to The Nightclub.” The 70s were a boom period with radio classics like “So Very Hard to Go” and “What Is Hip?,” and the band continued to tour and record over the years. Castillo says their love of the stage is the same today as it was back in 1968.

50 years later, in 2018, they returned to Oakland to celebrate their landmark 50th anniversary. Tower’s window-rattling grooves and raucous party spirit has been a balm for the soul throughout their half-century existence, but the release of 50 Years of Funk & Soul: Live at the Fox Theater couldn’t have arrived at a better time.

The band has long since surpassed Castillo’s modest aspirations, traveling the world, enjoying hit singles on their own, and backing legendary artists including Otis Redding, Elton John, Santana, the Grateful Dead, John Lee Hooker, Aerosmith, Bonnie Raitt, and countless others. In the process they’ve defined an “Oakland soul” sound as instantly recognizable as those from Castillo’s hometown, Detroit, as well as inspirations like Memphis and Philadelphia. 

The future of Tower of Power is set out to be vigorous and dynamic, and will prove to be just that for fans around the world starved for the band’s groove just the way Tower of Power likes it!

Elias Miller

Assistant Conductor of the Columbus Symphony, Music Director of the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra, 
and Music Director of the Apollo Ensemble of Boston, Elias Miller has established a reputation as a leading young conductor and orchestra builder. He has worked with numerous orchestras across the United States including the New York Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Nashville Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Albany Symphony, assisting notable conductors such as Giancarlo Guerrero, Thomas Wilkins, Juanjo Mena, JoAnn Falletta, Scott Yoo, Carlos Miguel Prieto, and Eun Sun Kim. As the Columbus Symphony‘s Assistant Conductor, Miller regularly conducts education, pops, and community concerts with the esteemed orchestra, including in-school concerts, young people’s concerts, family concerts, holiday pops, popcorn pops, and picnic with the pops programs, “Summer Night” concerts, and the symphony’s annual concert in Ash Cave. 

Together with flutist Michael Tabak, Miller co-founded the Apollo Ensemble of Boston in 2018. Under Miller’s leadership, Apollo evolved quickly from a small chamber orchestra into a full orchestra with extensive programming. Miller has since conducted Apollo in over 30 concert cycles in venues throughout the Greater Boston Area, collaborating with world-class soloists and living composers. From 2022 until 2024, Miller served as the Principal Conductor of Upbeat New Hampshire, an El Sistema USA member program. While there, Miller established an honors chamber music program and an annual week-long conducting workshop with a professional ensemble.

An active conductor of opera and oratorio, Miller conducted Festival Theater Hudson‘s inaugural performance: a staged production of Wagner’s Die Walküre (Act I) in 2021 and co-conducted a production of Philip Glass’ La Belle et la Bête, at the University of Houston’s Moores Opera Center in 2022. Between 2016 and 2019, Miller led the Harvard Early Music Society in several premieres of operatic works, including the Boston premiere of J.A. Hasse’s Alcide al Bivio, the North American premiere of Telemann’s 1745 Johannespassion, and the North American premiere of J.A. Hasse’s Sanctus Petrus et Sancta Maria Magdalena. Miller has also conducted performances of operas by Gluck, Stravinsky, William Grant Still, and Gilbert & Sullivan. Miller served as Assistant Conductor on a staged production of West Side Story – a collaboration between Opera Columbus, BalletMet, CAPA, and the Columbus Symphony – in 2025 and as the Assistant Conductor of Opera Saratoga in summer 2020.

A distinguished pianist and cellist, Miller has performed solo recitals in the United States and in Europe on both instruments and has served as a vocal coach and rehearsal pianist for many operatic productions. He holds degrees from Harvard University (A.B. in Music, summa cum laude) and the University of Michigan (M.M. in Orchestral Conducting) and completed his postgraduate studies at the University for Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. Miller’s teachers and mentors include Mark Stringer, Scott Yoo, Kenneth Kiesler, Federico Cortese, and his father, David Alan Miller.