Australian composer Sir Jonathan Mills emphasised importance of culture as honoured with a King’s award

Sir Jonathan Mills has been honoured with a King’s honour for his contribution to culture and tertiary education.

Arts director and composer Sir Jonathan Mills has been awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia. Picture: Britta Campion/The Australian

Australian composer and former Edinburgh Festival director Jonathan Mills has been recognised for his contributions to cultural leadership and diplomacy, as well as his work in the performing arts and tertiary education.

Sir Jonathan was delighted and humbled to hear he’d been awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia, though he noted it made him feel “a bit self-conscious”.

“I normally don’t dwell on what I do, I just do it,” he said.

Sir Jonathan has had an illustrious career directing music festivals across Australia, and has composed three operas, a ballet and several concertos.

The 61-year-old was also director of the Edinburgh Festival, though he has recently been working on his latest opera, Eucalyptus, which will be played at the Brisbane Festival in September.

Other recent endeavours have also led Sir Jonathan to combine his musical and architectural degrees to work on creating a creative precinct for the University of Melbourne’s upcoming Fishermans Bend campus.

The space will allow a whole new generation of artists doing it tough to access to studio space.

“When Barrie Kosky and other mates from my generation were growing up, the reason they could put on an experiment with theatre was because they could find a little space for no money up the back of a bookshop in Footscray or Fitzroy,” he said. “You can’t do that anymore, they’re all redeveloped.”

Sir Jonathan Mills said he was concerned culture was being lost in the current climate. Picture: Britta Campion/The Australian

Sir Jonathan said he was concerned culture was being lost in the current climate, making his work all the more important.

“(Culture) is about learning each other’s languages, respecting each other’s customs, understanding each other’s philosophical, ethical and religious perspectives,” he said. “It’s actually enjoying each other’s food and listening to each other’s songs and dancing together. That’s what cultures do … they bring us together, and in a world that is kind of pushing itself away from itself, I’m deeply concerned about that.”

He emphasised the importance of culture despite the constant pressure to focus on measurement and monetisation.

“There is increasingly extraordinary and compelling evidence that a life without culture is not ­really a life worth living. A life without culture is half a life, it’s depleted,” he said.