Oakland, CA—October 13, 2009. Mills College celebrates more than 80 years of musical innovation with a new name for its annual concert series—Mills Music Now—and a stellar line-up of performers.

The 2009–10 concert series includes headliners such as Nick Didkovsky, Krys Bobrowski, Cheryl E. Leonard, Iva Bittová, Bobi Céspedes, Stephen Vitiello, Imogen Cooper, Bob Ostertag, Viktoria Mullova, and Julia Wolfe and performances of works by renowned Mills composers including Pulitzer-prize winner and Mills alumnus Steve Reich.

In addition to the concerts, Mills College also offers Songlines, a series of symposia on sound, nature, technology, and performance with free admission to the public.

The newly named Mills Music Now series will be held in the historic Littlefield Concert Hall which reopened to record-breaking audiences earlier this year at the Mills Music Festival 2009 after the 450-seat hall underwent an extensive 18-month renovation.

Improvements to the concert hall included new acoustic panels for enhanced sound quality, an expanded stage area for larger performances, installation of a dedicated mixing station, soundproofing for performance and recording quality, new seating, and improved layout for a better audience experience. The multicolored frescoes and murals created by California painter Raymond Boynton were restored by two teams of art conservators to return them to their original vibrant colors.

"Ever since renowned French classical composer and Mills' professor Darius Milhaud encouraged soon-to-be-renowned jazz pianist composer and Mills' student Dave Brubeck to 'be himself,' our students have been discovering how to 'be themselves' with single-handed determination," said Fred Frith, head of the Music Department and internationally known composer, multi-instrumentalist, and improviser. "As a Music Department that encourages experimentation while respecting tradition, we are second to none."

Mills music faculty, students, and visiting artists from varied musical traditions come from as far away as Argentina, China, France, and Turkey to study musical forms from electronic music to classical performance to jazz improvisation. They also come to the Center of Contemporary Music, formerly the San Francisco Tape Music Center and housed at Mills since 1966.

"Mills is uniquely placed to cultivate, appreciate, and celebrate musical pioneers," Frith said. "And it is why some of the top names in contemporary music—Milhaud, Brubeck, Joëlle Léandre, Phil Lesh, John Cage, Anthony Braxton, and Pauline Oliveros, have been part of the faculty and student population at Mills."

Visit http://musicnow.mills.edu for more information on the 2009-10 Mills Music Now concert series and to purchase tickets.

Nestled in the foothills of Oakland, California, Mills College is a nationally renowned, independent liberal arts college offering a dynamic progressive education that fosters leadership, social responsibility, and creativity to approximately 950 undergraduate women and 550 graduate women and men. Since 2000, applications to Mills College have more than doubled. The College is named one of the top colleges in the West by U.S. News & World Report, and ranks as one of the Best 371 Colleges by the Princeton Review. Forbes.com ranked Mills 55th among America's best colleges and named it a "Top Ten: Best of the All-Women's Colleges." Visit us at www.mills.edu.

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