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.

[9][10] 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",[11] "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)[12] and "Elizabeth I, the last dance"[13][14] Carlos Miranda has produced scores for movies directed by independent Spanish film-makers, among which: Celestino Coronado’s "Hamlet" (1977)[15] and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1984),[16] Manuel Huerga's "Gaudì" (1988), Félix Rotaeta's "The Pleasure of Killing" (1988) and "Chatarra" (1991).

In 2004 he composed and recorded the music for multimedia dance spectacle "Glimpse"[19][20] (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).

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 (Miloš Forman – 2006), Karol: The Pope, The Man (made for TV, Giacomo Battiato – 2006) and The Promise, (Terry George – 2016).