Richard Mills (composer)
Richard John Mills , (born 14 November 1949) is an Australian conductor and composer. He is currently the artistic director of Victorian Opera, and formerly artistic director of the West Australian Opera and artistic consultant with Orchestra Victoria. He was commissioned by the Victoria State Opera to write his opera "Summer of the Seventeenth Doll" (1996) and by Opera Australia to write the opera "Batavia" (2001). Career. Mills was born and grew up in Toowoomba, Queensland, and went to Nudgee College in Brisbane. He studied in London with Edmund Rubbra at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama  and worked as a percussionist in England and for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. Mills started conducting and composing in the 1980s. In 1988, to celebrate the Australian Bicentenary, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) commissioned Mills to re-orchestrate Charles Williams's "Majestic Fanfare", the signature tune of ABC news and television broadcasts, in a more modern, Australian idiom. He was engaged to conduct Opera Australia's first complete production of Richard Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" in the State Theatre, Melbourne, in 2013, the of the composer's birth. On 5 June 2013, he withdrew from the Opera Australia  Ring cycle. Honours. He won the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award in 1982. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1999. He received the Green Room Award in 2001 and 2002, and the Helpmann Award in 2002 for his opera "Batavia", in 2006 for his conducting of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde", and in 2007 for Best Musical Direction of his opera "The Love of the Nightingale". He also received the Ian Potter Foundation Award for Established Composers. Mills was Musica Viva Australia's featured composer for 2008. In 2019 he was elected an Honorary  Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA). Awards and nominations. Don Banks Music Award. The Don Banks Music Award was established in 1984 to publicly honour a senior artist of high distinction who has made an outstanding and sustained contribution to music in Australia. It was founded by the Australia Council in honour of Don Banks, Australian composer, performer and the first chair of its music board.