W. Frederic Mills Arrangements
W. Frederic Mills
We were lucky to be able to encourage Fred to leave his principal trumpet position with the National Arts Centre Orchestra to join us in 1972. He told us one of the large enticements to joining our merry band was the opportunity to write for us all. Fred had an enormous repertoire in his head from his loves of opera, ballet, orchestra, oratorio and jazz. He brought elements of all these genres to us and created an amazing repertoire of solos and ensembles for us and now the brass world. A special element influencing his refined musical tastes was his work with masters like Casals and Stokowski — these exposures lead him to accept no less than highest art in his own work.