Profile: Jonathan Mills
[ UniNews Vol. 15, No. 4
20 March - 3 April 2006 ]
Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow Mr Jonathan Mills (right) has been named the new Director for the Edinburgh International Festival. He takes up this appointment in October 2006 and will be responsible for planning the 2007 Festival onwards.
In the meantime, his role at Melbourne is to take the University’s rich cultural resources to a broad audience and to advise on future directions for the creative arts curriculum and teaching.
Mr Mills marvels at the depth and breadth of the University’s artistic and cultural resources spanning the Melbourne Theatre Company and the concert offerings of the Victorian College of the Arts and the Faculty of Music to the Ian Potter Museum of Art, to Meanjin and Melbourne University Publishing, to the role of the public intellectual.
Over the next few months, he will look for opportunities to further this ‘knowledge transfer’ to the wider community.
Jonathan Mills’ array of directing and organisation roles has frequently brought him into contact with the University. As Director of the high-profile Alfred Deakin Lectures he has drawn speakers from the University which has also been a sponsor of the Lectures.
He is Artistic Adviser to the new Melbourne Recital Centre incorporating the Elisabeth Mudoch Hall which is being built side-by-side with the new Melbourne Theatre Company theatre at Southbank, and a member of the working group looking at the feasibility of a new Conservatorium of Music at Southbank.
He has worked extensively in the arts in Australia as well as the United Kingdom and Europe and has considerable experience in directing the Melbourne Festival in 2000 and 2001, and Melbourne’s Millennium Eve in 1999.
One of Australia’s most prominent composers and artistic directors, Mr Mills began his artistic career studying composition in Australia and then piano and composition with Lidia Arcuri-Baldecchi in Italy. He also holds a degree in architecture and is an authority on acoustic design.
His Sandakan Threnody has received international acclaim and other recent works include the electro-acoustic dance opera Ethereal Eye and a chamber orchestra composition called the Ghost Wife.
Mr Mills is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts
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