Australian composer Jonathan Mills to head Edinburgh International Festival
01 March 2006
Jonathan Mills, 42, a former director of the Melbourne International Arts Festival, will start work in October to prepare for the 2007 Edinburgh International Festival. He plans to serve only five or six years in the job, compared with the 15 years racked up by his predecessor, Sir Brian McMaster, who retires this summer.
In his first press conference, Mr Mills ruled out performing his own award-winning work at the Festival, and said he wanted to reintroduce visual arts as part of the line-up.
He was "humbled and excited" to be offered the post. "I do agree this is the best job in the world," he said. "Edinburgh is one of the great cities, where you can really have a festival with a sense of festivity.
"This doesn't just mean things to this city. Edinburgh means something, and its Festival means something, to the whole world. I will move here as soon as I can. I have got an enormous number of ideas and I can't wait to begin."
The choice was a closely guarded secret and Mr Mills' name did not emerge among better-known favourites. One observer said the Festival had "reached under the radar" to pick him.
But Lesley Hinds, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh who chaired the search committee, said the "exciting selection" was a unanimous decision. "This is one of the most important appointments in the city," she said. She called him a renowned composer bursting with ideas and enthusiasm.
Mr Mills was born and raised in Sydney, but Festival chiefs pointed to some Scottish roots yesterday. His grandfather left Scotland for Australia as a teenager after his own father died in an industrial accident. His 1949 return to Scotland with Mr Mills' mother, Elayne, to go to the Edinburgh Festival had become part of family lore, he said. Mr Mills, who is 42 and unmarried, last visited the Festival himself in 2002, seeing shows such as The Girl on the Sofa at the Royal Lyceum.
He pledged not to "inflict" his own compositions on the Festival. But his experience as a creative artist staring at a blank piece of paper meant he knew what life was like for the artists who came here, with "their fragilities, their concerns, their anxieties", he said.
