He won a British Council Scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London studying piano with Harry Platts, composition with John Lambert and conducting with Vernon Handley. After graduating, he joined the Rambert Dance Company (1974–78) as Pianist and resident Composer, playing and writing scores for both dance performances and concerts with the Mercury Ensemble.
He was born in Chile, where he studied at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música composition with Gustavo Becerra-Schmidt and piano with Flora Guerra. He moved to Italy and worked as apprentice in films by Franco Zeffirelli (Romeo and Juliet) and Pier Paolo Pasolini (Teorema). He then settled in London, initially working nights as accompanist to American cabaret singer Militia Battlefield (portrayed in Jana Bokova's 1975 documentary film of the same name, and days as Pianist repetiteur at The Dance Centre (Covent Garden) for various dance teachers among which: Errol Addison, Matt Matt Ox, Brigitte Kelly and John O'Brien.
In 1977 he wrote the music for the full-length dance-theatre work "Cruel Garden", choreographed by Christopher Bruce, scenario and direction by Lindsay Kemp. The piece, based on the life and death of Federico Garcia Lorca, has since been staged by various dance companies in the UK, Germany and the USA. The BBC television adaptation, directed by Colin Nears, won the Prix Italia Music-1982.
In 1992 Carlos Miranda composed the music and conducted the Barcelona Symphony and Catalonia National Orchestra for the Parade of Nations during the 1992 Summer Olympics, and also created the Soundtrack for the official video of the Seville Expo '92.
In 1993 he conducted the Orquestra de Cambra Teatre Lliure in performances of his score for the full-length ballet "El Jardiner" for Compañía de Danza Gelabert Azzopardi. In 1997 he wrote the piece "Quell Inocente Figlio" for the BBC Radio 3 series "The Schubert Songbook". In 2004 he composed and recorded the music for multimedia dance spectacle "Glimpse" (Barcelona FORUM) collaborating with choreographer/dancer Cesc Gelabert and American media-dance filmmaker Charles Atlas. That year he also wrote the instrumental piece "Del Amor Insomne Noche" (City of London Festival) later recorded for BBC Radio 3 by the Galliard Ensemble Wind Quintet, with Lucy Wakeford (harp) and Colin Currie (marimba).
His association with Lindsay Kemp began with his earliest creation for Rambert Dance Co., the recently revived ballet "The Parades Gone By". He then joined the Lindsay Kemp Company writing the music and collaborating in the creation of various dance-theatre productions that toured Europe, the Americas, Israel, Singapore, Japan and Australia: "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Mr. Punch's Pantomime", "Duende, Poema Fantastico per F. Garcia Lorca", "The Big Parade" (Producciones Julio Alvarez), "Nijinsky il Matto" (Teatro Alla Scala, Milano), "Cinderella, a Gothic Operetta" (Cenicienta S.L), "Variété" (Susumu Matahira-Tate Corporation), "Dreamdances" (Italian tour 2001) and "Elizabeth I, the last dance"
Among the films he has acted in: Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes – 1998), Mauvais Esprit (Patrick Alessandrin – 2003), The Feast of the Goat (Luis Llosa – 2005), Goya's Ghosts (Milos Forman – 2006), Karol: The Pope, The Man (made for TV, Giacomo Battiato – 2006) and The Promise, (Terry George – 2016).
