A musician's life at Mills is active and varied. Performance is essential, not only for those who will concentrate on that art, but for composers and theoreticians as well. Students initiate, organize, and perform in a broad array of events culminating in graduate thesis concerts. Resident ensembles, which include instructors and students alike, frequently perform compositions by graduate students and faculty. Distinguished members of the symphony, opera and ballet orchestras of the San Francisco Bay Area join with an impressive group of other professionals to form the individual instruction faculty.
Individual instruction is available in instruments, voice, and composition.
An annual concert series offers students exposure to master performers in Western art music, world music, and experimental music. Visiting performers in recent years have included Lois V. Vierk, Jaap Schroeder, Malcolm Bilson, Ali Akbar Khan, David Tudor, Frederic Rzewski, Steve Lacy, Marilyn Crispell, Murray Perahia, Emanuel Ax, and Ruth Laredo. Among these is Songlines, a series of symposia on sound, nature, technology, and performance which brings guest composers, artists, and researchers in new music technologies in an informal setting to discuss and present their work. Like all Mills graduate programs, the music program is small. Students have opportunities for individual attention from all the faculty, whose efforts are regularly augmented by the presence of visiting composers, performing artists, and musicologists who come for performances, master classes, lectures, or extended teaching duties.