Fred Mills

This evening, the UGA School of Music reports that W. Fred Mills died from injuries sustained in a car accident. Mills was born in Guelph, Canada. While at the Juilliard School of Music studying with Wm Vacchiano, he was invited to join the Houston Symphony Orchestra (Texas) as Principal Trumpet by the conductor Leopold Stokowski. In 1961 Stokowski formed the American Symphony Orchestra in New York City and Fred was a founding member.

While living in NYC, Mills played with the Symphony of the Air, NYC Ballet Orchestra, Musica Aeterna Orchestra at the Metropolitan Museum, Marlboro Festival Orchestra and Casals Festival Orchestra.; he recorded with Morton Gould, Robert Shaw, Igor Stravinsky, Steinberg and Stokowski.

For six years Mills was principal trumpet with the New York City Opera. In 1968 he returned to Canada to play with the National Arts Centre Orchestra. In 1972 he joined the Canadian Brass and for 24 years Mills played over 3500 concerts in Asia, Europe, and North America with the CB. As a member of the renowned Canadians, Mills made over 40 CDs for RCA, Sony, Philips and BMG. During this time Mills contributed more than 50 transcriptions and arrangements to the Brass repertoire. While with the CB, Fred made numerous TV apperances on PBS, CBC, NHK, BBC and American Networks. He was a Grammy award nominee in 1992.

Later, Mills was Professor of Trumpet and Brass Chamber Music at the University of Georgia where he coached a graduate brass quintet, the Bulldog Brass Society, composed of graduate assistants selected from a national search. In addition to his professorship, Mills continued to be active as a soloist and brass quintet clinician, working with groups such as Summit Brass (USA), Victoria Symphony Orch, The German Brass, New Sousa Band with Keith Brion , Orquesta Sinfonica de Aguascalientes (Mexico) , Brassa Nova(Sweden), Hartwick College Summer Music Festival with New York Philharmonic Brass Quintet, Mostly Mozart Festival(NYC), Luurs-Metalls Brass Quintet (Spain), Basel Brass Quintet (Switzerland), Spartanburg Symphony and Athens,GA Symphony.

Fred Mills performs and Ronald Romm conducts at the 2008 ITG Conference in Banff

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Story from the Online Athens Journal: http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/092109/uga_495508824.shtml