Mike Mills, left, and Robert McDuffie are childhood friends who grew up in Macon, Georgia. Mills went on to be the bass player for the highly successful rock band R.E.M. while McDuffie became a world-renowned violinist. The two will perform “Concerto for Violin, Rock Band and String Orchestra” at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Harris Hall.
Robert McDuffie is celebrating his 50th consecutive year as a performer at the Aspen Music Festival and School. On Wednesday, he will perform Brahms’ “Violin Sonata No. 1 in G major, pp. 78” and then he will join Mike Mills (a founding member of the rock band R.E.M.) for “Concerto for Violin, Rock Band and String Orchestra,” which was composed by Mills.
A&E Reporter
Mike Mills, left, and Robert McDuffie are childhood friends who grew up in Macon, Georgia. Mills went on to be the bass player for the highly successful rock band R.E.M. while McDuffie became a world-renowned violinist. The two will perform “Concerto for Violin, Rock Band and String Orchestra” at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Harris Hall.
When Robert McDuffie and Mike Mills were in the church choir together as boys in Macon, Georgia, neither could have known that music would take each one of them all over the world and that one day they would join together and close their shows with a song called “Losing My Religion.”
That’s precisely what the two will do Wednesday night at Harris Hall when they perform — as part of the Aspen Music Festival and School’s summer programming — “Concerto for Violin, Rock Band and String Orchestra,” which was composed by Mills. McDuffie also will perform Brahms’ “Violin Sonata No. 1 in G major, pp. 78.”
The road from choir pew to Harris Hall has been a wild and varied ride for Mills and McDuffie. Mills left Macon and moved to Athens, Georgia, where he became the bass player for R.E.M., one of the greatest American rock bands. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
Mills is part of a long tradition of rock ’n’ roll in Macon. Otis Redding and Little Richard both hailed from there and the Allman Brothers famously set up camp in Macon in 1969.
McDuffie chose the violin. His mother was a classical pianist who recognized talent in her son at an early age.
“My mother made me practice,” McDuffie recalled in a recent interview. “I’d already been playing the violin for eight years when I was 14 and Itzhak Perlman came to Macon, and that performance changed my life. I realized I was gonna be a musician the rest of my life. And then when I came to Aspen, just three years later, there’s Itzhak Perlman.”
It was 1976 when McDuffie attended AMFS for the first time as a student. 2025 marks his 50th consecutive year as a performer at AMFS, a record that will be difficult to break.
“I met Bobby McDuffie when we were both students at Juilliard in the late ’70s. We have been wonderful friends ever since,” said Alan Fletcher, president and CEO of AMFS. “One of the most important aspects of Bobby’s remarkable career has been his openness to new work, and boundary-defying work, from his commissioning of Philip Glass to his work with Mike Mills of R.E.M., to name just two of scores of examples. Bobby also is one of the most likeable people in the whole world of music, making friends easily but keeping those friends truly close ever after.”
McDuffie said his life changed forever when he came to Aspen.
“It was total immersion with like-minded students, but also being around these heroes of mine who were on stage playing their solos while the students were in the orchestra,” McDuffie said. “I can’t stress enough what that feeling is to be in the same space with one of your musical heroes. And that’s what did it for me. I fell in love with music here.
“I kind of grew up here as well. I made the transition from student to performer, and now I’m performer and teacher. Aspen has been such a wonderful part of my life.”
Robert McDuffie is celebrating his 50th consecutive year as a performer at the Aspen Music Festival and School. On Wednesday, he will perform Brahms’ “Violin Sonata No. 1 in G major, pp. 78” and then he will join Mike Mills (a founding member of the rock band R.E.M.) for “Concerto for Violin, Rock Band and String Orchestra,” which was composed by Mills.
McDuffie has appeared as a soloist with renowned orchestras on five continents. Famed composer Philip Glass dedicated his “Violin Concerto No. 2, The American Four Seasons” to McDuffie and he has performed it more than 100 times around the world.
McDuffie has been busy off the stage as well. He started the Rome Chamber Music Festival in Italy and is best known for founding the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University in his native city of Macon.
“Bobby also is a visionary in the education of musicians, and his McDuffie Center for Strings in Macon, Georgia, is one of the most innovative and successful endeavors in the higher education of musicians I have seen in my own career,” Fletcher said.
The center consists of 27 students from around the world. The school has a hybrid music, liberal arts, and business curriculum “so that they can be prepared for whatever’s thrown at them once they get out into the real world,” McDuffie said.
McDuffie and Mills lost touch for years, but in 1995 they reconnected when McDuffie went to see R.E.M. in Kansas City and they rekindled their friendship. After R.E.M.’s members announced the band’s retirement in 2011, McDuffie approached his old friend about a collaboration.
“I play the music of a lot of dead white European males, but I’m also committed to living American composers and I really wanted to work on something with Mike,” McDuffie said. “I loved R.E.M. and was always impressed with Mike’s gift for melody so we went out to dinner at a restaurant in Athens when I proposed the idea for a collaboration.”
Mills picked up the story, saying, “It was right at the time when R.E.M. had broken up and I was at loose ends and I said, ‘Well, I guess this is something I could try to do. I’m a melody guy. It’s what I love, it’s what I do best and that’s how I approached this, was to write some music that would have melodies that Bobby could really enjoy playing over it.”
Mills said he owed a huge debt to his arranger David Mallamud. “It would have taken me a lifetime to score all this out for string orchestra, or the quartet, or even Bobby’s parts. I’ve never written for violin. So I just did the melodies and David helped me bring them to life.”
Mills and McDuffie have performed the piece in various iterations, from string orchestra to a fully symphonic version with an 86-piece symphony, and also an acoustic chamber version. The acoustic chamber version is how they will perform it in Aspen.
McDuffie and Mills will be joined by Derek Wang, Adam Cockerham, John Neff and William Tonks for the performance. Several members of the chamber orchestra are students at McDuffie’s conservancy in Macon.
Mills said that beyond playing great music, he hopes to break down the walls between classical music and some audiences.
“Classical music takes a beating because people perceive it as stuffy and formal, and you can’t relax and have a good time,” Mills said. “But one of the things we do with the concerto is we make sure that everyone knows that it is not a stuffy classical show, it’s a combination of rock and roll and classical, and we intend to have a good time and we want the audience to as well.”
McDuffie said he hopes to bring some new people into a classical concert hall.
“I think they’ll be, hopefully, smiling at the end, knowing they heard beautiful Brahms, but also, rock and roll music written by an icon. The music is remarkable. It’s an eclectic, fun concert, one that’s beautiful, and one that’ll make them happy, and hopefully they’ll be smiling when they leave the hall.”
Visit aspenmusicfestival.com for ticket information.
geoff@aspendailynews.com
A&E Reporter
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