Kenneth G. Mills - Music

Music

Mills’ philosophy always possessed for him strong musical implications. “The purpose of Music is to reveal to man his innate at-one-ment with a harmonic state of Being”, he said. When three singers (from the vocal group The Free Design) asked him for help with their voices in 1976, Mills soon found himself re-engaging the world of concertizing. Within a short time, the three singers were joined by seven others, and the a cappella vocal ensemble he called The Star-Scape Singers was formed. These singers were ultimately acclaimed in the United States and abroad as creators of a renaissance in choral art.

Star-Scape made their American debut at Carnegie Hall in 1981, ultimately performing seven different concerts there between 1981 and 1986. New York City critics described them as “an instrument of bright and extraordinary varied capacity” and “a vocal ensemble of rare distinction.” In 1983, the Singers embarked upon their first tour to Europe, performing at several large choral festivals, and on subsequent tours at many of the great halls and cathedrals of both Western and Eastern Europe. One critic in Munich described their work with Mills as “phenomenal, artistic, one-of-a-kind vocal art.” Mills and the ensemble made a total of seven lengthy European and Soviet tours. While on tour in 1984, they were asked to make a recording for broadcast on Radio Vatican, inaugurating the World Year of Music in 1985. One of their performances of The Fire Mass, considered the ensemble’s major work, at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto was broadcast nationwide by the (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in 1988. On their tour to the then-USSR in 1991, Mills and the Singers led the first non-military Victory Day Parade down Gorky Street in Moscow.

Mills co-composed or arranged over 150 pieces for the Star-Scape repertoire in collaboration with composer Christopher Dedrick. In 1996, Mills began composing spontaneous orchestral works, using four MIDI keyboards plus foot pedals to capture his instantaneous compositions. Critics have credited him with bridging the classical and new age genres. His goal was to approximate the sounds of real instruments as closely as possible with the keyboards, and in 2002 a CD of several of his orchestral compositions, titled Majestic Tonescape, was released, performed by musicians from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.