The Man
Honorary PRIME Mentor of Canada
Kenneth Mills, noted composer, philosopher and artist was awarded the 1997 Honorary Prime MENTOR of Canada. The award celebration was held on April 5, 1997 at the Royal York Hotel, Toronto, Canada.
"St. Stephen 'Renaissance' Man Named Honorary PRIME Mentor of Canada," article by Jan-Christian Sorensen in the New Brunswick Saint John Telegraph Journal, May 3, 1997
Honorary Doctorate
Kenneth G. Mills was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Wolfe's University, Toronto, Canada. The award was presented in 1998 by Reverend Dr. Bothwell.
Award of Excellence
In 1998 Dr. Mills was also recognized by the Honourable Stanley Haidasz, Senator and Dean Emeritus of the Canadian Parliament, with an Award of Excellence "for Outstanding Achievement in Humanities, Education, Philosophy and Arts."
"With congratulations, on behalf of the Senate of Canada, please accept this special award and citation. We know that you have done a great deal, but in concisely, in such small and humble terms, the Senate holds you in very high esteem and has asked me as Dean Emeritus to present this award to you with thanks, recognition and best wishes for continued happiness, health and success. Congratulations !" (Senator Stanley Haidasz)
The Musician
MedArt Special Recognition Award
"MedArt USA, Inc. presents this Special Recognition Award to Maestro Kenneth G. Mills, Star-Scape Singers, for the outstanding Healing Power of his Art."
Kenneth G. Mills, conductor of the Star-Scape Singers, was the recipient of the Special Recognition Award at the Gala Banquet of the MedArt International 1992 World Congress, held at the Sheraton Towers New York Hotel.
The award was given in the context of a distinguished gathering of physicians and artists who are specializing in bringing the arts to medicine and medicine to the arts.
Upon presenting the award - an original sculptural interpretation of the MedArt logo -
Dr .William Riley, an accomplished baritone and leading exponent of rehabilitation techniques for the voice, said:
"Kenneth Mills is a remarkable man, gifted in the ability to communicate to people verbally, musically, vocally and spiritually. He has brought joy to millions of people worldwide, and his use of the communication through song and the ability to teach song to people across language barriers is truly unique in today's world."
(W. Riley)
Encyclopedia of Music in Canada
MILLS, Kenneth (George).Conductor, composer, poet, lecturer, b St. Stephen, NB. He studied piano privately with Mona Bates in Toronto, Victor Babin in Aspen, Colo, and Nadia Reisenberg in New York. After making Toronto and New York debuts in 1952 and 1962 respectively, Mills gave up his career as a pianist in 1965. Though continuing to teach and adjudicate until 1975, he devoted himself increasingly to giving lectures in Toronto and later throughout Canada, the USA, and Europe, promoting awareness of the individual's inherent freedom as a conscious being, a philosophy possessing for Mills strong musical implications.
'The purpose of Music is to reveal to man his innate at-one-ment with a harmonic state of Being' ('Star-Scape Singers, 'CanComp, 206, Dec 1985). His conviction that every human voice can be liberated to sing contributed to his founding in1976 a ten-voice vocal ensemble, the Star-Scape Singers. The five men and five women, all students of Mills' philosophy and all possessing the extraordinary range and variety of timbre which are hallmarks of what Mills terms 'voices set free,' are 'hailed abroad and in the USA as creators of a renaissance in choral art for their astonishing body of work that cannot be compared to anything else because it is so original - and which, touching on the instinctive, the primal, the intellectual and spiritual, leads one to a feeling of approaching cosmic awareness' (PfAC, Sept 1986).
Mills, in collaboration with choir member Chris Dedrick, composes specifically for the choir, setting texts drawn from his own published poems to polytonal, polyrhythmic music rich in overtones, high-pitched harmonies, and evocative chords,and exploiting an impressive range of innovative vocal sonority. The Fire Mass combines texts of the traditional Latin ordinary with Mills' poetry and is considered the Star-Scape Singers' major work. The choir premiered it in New York's Carnegie Hall in 1986 and has performed the work in Europe; a 1988 performance of it in Roy Thomson Hall was broadcast nationally by the CBC. The Star-Scape Singers have toured and broadcast extensively in Europe including the USSR, have given frequent concerts in Toronto and New York, and have toured in Texas and Arizona.
The Speaker
"It is not the written word or the composed word but the living Word."
(Lex Hixon, author of Coming Home)
"Kenneth George Mills' work uses translucent language to awaken us from the slumber of the mind into the reality of Being. If you would like to explore a new way of seeing your eternal self and your relationship to the infinite, then this book [Change Your Standpoint - Change Your World] will open some new doors for you." (Gordon Davidson, author of Spiritual Politics)
"Some great ones give us meditations, some parables, some koans. Kenneth Mills gives us another form. . . These words wrinkle the mind and prevent it from its usual collection process and prison building." (Dr. Elaine de Beauport, in the foreword to Freedom Is Found)
"The spontaneous Unfoldments of Kenneth G. Mills are an extraordinary conjunction of light and sound; his spontaneous verbal outpourings are sculpted from the matrix of a Universal prospect of Life. The Newness of the Unchanging is a work that embodies the rare unification of spiritual vision and immediate verbal response. The result is not only a magnificent work of art, but also an offering to the realm of time that may emancipate from limits those who are attuned."
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