Mills College music spectacular starts Saturday

The Oakland college celebrates 80 years of its famed contemporary music program with a festival and the grand re-opening of its gloriously restored concert hall.

Over the past 80 years, some of the top names in contemporary music have studied or taught at Mills College: Darius Milhaud, Dave Brubeck, and members of today’s indie-rock group Deerhoof. Even Berkeley’s internationally renowned composer, John Adams, while not studying or teaching at Mills, hung out with Mills students as an aspiring young musician and composer newly arrived in the Bay Area in the early 1970s.

With a six-concert festival, Mills College is celebrating its tradition of nurturing musicians who want to experiment without any preconceived notions and who want to engage in an active search for new sounds and musical forms. The Festival opens Saturday with the grand re-opening of its gloriously restored 450-seat Concert Hall.

The festival itself will feature cutting-edge contemporary music that crosses genres. And that music will be performed in a 1928 Spanish Colonial-style hall that underwent $11 million in renovations. The work involved expanding the stage, replacing the seats, and restoring, to their original splendor and vibrant colors, frescoes painted by California muralist Raymond Boynton. The frescoes depict scenes of life, love, and death through mythological imagery.

Saturday’s festival opening night gives a good taste of what Mills’ music program has always been about.

Pauline Oliveros, one of today’s most distinguished composers, will perform Sound. Light. Migrations (2009) for accordion and her "expanded instrument system," which will process and distribute the sounds of her accordion throughout the concert hall during the performance. Tony Martin will contribute a visual performance using video projection and a custom-designed software system for direct drawing with light.

Also on the bill is Terry Riley, a former Mills faculty member and founder of what became known as minimalist music. His celebrated Composition In C marked a significant turning point in 20th-century music. He will perform a yet-to-be-announced work highlighting his keyboard virtuosity. .

Current faculty members will also be showcased. Piano virtuoso Joseph Kubera will perform 8/8/88 (1998), a solo composition written especially for him by Roscoe Mitchell, Mills’ Darius Milhaud Professor of Composition. Mills faculty member and cellist and composer Joan Jeanrenaud, a former member of the legendary Kronos Quartet, will perform two of her own works: Vermont Rules (2002), a set of thematic variations based on the blues, impressionism, Arabian music, and Bach; and Strange Toys (2004), a set of six two-minute pieces using electronic looping techniques to create compelling textural layers.

Upcoming festival events  include: a concert of electronic music to celebrate the Center for Contemporary Music (Sunday); a concert of improvised duets by composer Muhal Richard Abrams (Friday, February 27); Mills faculty, alumnae, and students performing Darius Millhaud’s Brazilian-inspired compositions (Saturday, February 28); the Arditti string quartet (Sunday, March 8); and an eclectic lineup of artists performing the music of faculty member Fred Frith (Sunday, April 5).

For information about the festival, visit its website. mills.edu/musicfestival. To purchase tickets online, visit boxofficetickets.com and enter the keywords "Mills Festival."

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