Oakland, CA–May 25, 2009. Mills College alumnus Steve Reich, MA '63, received a Pulitzer Prize for music for his composition Double Sextet. The award recognizes "distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year."

Double Sextet was written for two sextets of flute, clarinet, vibraphone, piano, violin, and cello, which allows two identical instruments to interlock and produce one overall pattern.

Reich mentioned his time at Mills College in his book, Writings about Music, 1965-2000. After his studies at Juilliard, Reich left New York City for Northern California. He considered both UC Berkeley and Mills College for his graduate education and decided on Mills. He thought it was a more interesting place because Italian composer Luciano Berio was on the faculty. At Mills, he studied with Berio and the serial technique.

Reich also took advantage of the rich cultural scene in the Bay Area. At the Jazz Workshop, he heard John Coltrane perform and also began to work with the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Reich's MA thesis was a work entitled Three Pieces for Jazz Quintet (1963), which combined serial techniques and jazz.

"This was the most interesting music for me at that time," he wrote in his book. "By day I was learning what I did not want to do, but by night I was learning about something that I did want somehow to work into my life. Student composers at that time were writing enormously complicated pieces."

Because Mills College did not have an orchestra at the time, Reich began writing for his own ensemble, which led to the formation of the Steve Reich Ensemble. He learned the importance for composers of new music to be able to play their own works. His first attempt at writing works using tape loops was Plastic Haircut, a composition written at Mills for a film by Robert Nelson.

He also read Studies in African Music by A.M. Jones while at Mills, which had a profound impact on the development of his musical style, particularly his rhythmic techniques.

Nestled in the foothills of Oakland, California, Mills College is a nationally renowned, independent liberal arts college offering a dynamic progressive education that fosters leadership, social responsibility, and creativity to approximately 950 undergraduate women and 500 graduate women and men. Since 2000, applications to Mills College have more than doubled. The College is named one of the top colleges in the West by U.S. News & World Report, one of the Best 368 Colleges by the Princeton Review, and ranks 75th among America's best colleges by Forbes.com. Visit us at www.mills.edu.

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