Alex Mills

Alex Mills is a London-based composer with an output spanning opera, orchestral music, choral music, chamber music, and works for dance, art installations and film. His music has been widely performed, including at the Barbican, The National Gallery, the V&A, Wigmore Hall, King’s Place, Café OTO and broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and 4.

He has a particular interest in how music can express emotions and how it can impact the emotional wellbeing of both performers and audiences. Recent works have explored how to embed meditation practices into musical performance to create a new modality of music-making that prioritises mental wellbeing. 

His first opera Dear Marie Stopes, about birth control and women’s bodily freedom, premiered in London in 2018 at the Welcome Collection and was revived in 2019 at King’s Place. It was called “a first-rate addition to the catalogue of one-act operas” by The Stage. His second opera, LEONARDO, explored the often-overlooked queer identity of Leonardo da Vinci and premiered at the V&A in 2019, the 500th anniversary year of the polymath’s death. 

The Guardian have described his work as “music of supernatural poignancy, melodic but otherworldly, narratively urgent but poetically impressionistic." 

Originally from Pembrokeshire in Wales, he studied music at the University of Cambridge and a Master’s in Composition at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, for which he was awarded a distinction. Recent commissions include a new piece for BBC National Orchestra of Wales.