Since his concerto debut at Chicago’s Ravinia Festival in 2004, Grammy-nominated violinist JESSE MILLS has established a unique career, performing music from classical to contemporary, as well as composed and improvised music of his own invention. The Washington Post claimed, “Mills played [Messiaen] as if he’d just received it from some distant, vast and magnificent reach of the cosmos.”
He earned a Grammy nomination for his work on a CD of Arnold Schoenberg’s music, released by NAXOS in 2005. He can also be heard on the Koch, Centaur, Tzadik, Max Jazz and Verve labels for various compositions of Webern, Schoenberg, Zorn, Wuorinen, and others. As a member of the FLUX Quartet from 2001-2003, Mills performed music composed during the last 50 years (including the famous six-hour-long String Quartet No. 2 by Morton Feldman), in addition to frequent world premieres. As a composer and arranger, Mills has been commissioned by venues including Columbia University’s Miller Theater and the Chamber Music Northwest festival in Portland, OR.
A co-founder of Duo Prism, with pianist Rieko Aizawa, they earned 1st Prize at the 2006 Zinetti International Competition. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School, where he was a student of Dorothy DeLay, Robert Mann, and Itzhak Perlman.
