Robert McDuffie and Mike Mills reunited at the Piedmont Grand Opera House in Macon on Monday for a performance by the Macon-Mercer Symphony Orchestra featuring students from the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings.
The international concert violin virtuoso and rock star R.E.M. bassist met at church as middle schoolers growing up in Macon and this week reprised Mills’ vibrant Concerto for Violin, Rock Band and String Orchestra, which debuted at the same venue in 2016 following its Toronto world premiere. The event also included conductor Peter Oundjian leading the MMSO for the concerto and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1.
A few years back, McDuffie, Mills and former Allman Brothers Band/current Rolling Stones keyboardist Chuck Leavell collaborated on A Night of Georgia Music, the Emmy-winning 2022 GPB showcase which included songs by R.E.M., Otis Redding, Ray Charles, the Allman Brothers Band, Outkast and the B-52s as well as Mills’ concerto.
Today, after nearly a decade and dozens of performances of those classically-inspired movements McDuffie encouraged Mills to write, the two said doing it again is part of their friendship and mutual love of performing.
“I just like hanging out with Bobby,” Mills said in an interview before the Nov. 17 show. “He says, ‘You wanna do a concerto?’ and I say, ‘Can we have dinner?’ He says, ‘Yes.’ So I said, ‘Okay, I’ll go.’”
“Can we play golf?” McDuffie interjected, laughing.
“We love it. It’s a fun thing to do, and it accomplishes one of our overriding goals…to try to make classical music more open to people who have pre-existing notions about what classical music is,” Mills said. “Not that what I did is classical music, it is purely not, but in some ways it’s adjacent.”
A marker in time for Mills, McDuffie and Macon
The Macon concert capped a busy 2025 for both musicians.
This summer, McDuffie, who started his eponymous Center for Strings at Mercer University’s Townsend School of Music in 2004, celebrated 22 years as founder at the Rome Chamber Music Festival in Italy and his 50th year at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado. He performed Philip Glass’ Violin Concerto No. 2: The American Four Seasons with the New Japan Philharmonic in Tokyo in October.
Mills joined with R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe to promote World Press Freedom Day with a new music video for the band’s 1981 debut single, “Radio Free Europe” in May and toured this fall with R.E.M. side groups the Baseball Project (with guitarist Peter Buck) and Howl Owl Howl, featuring Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish and Steve Gorman from the Black Crowes.
Mills remembered when he and McDuffie went their separate ways after the violin prodigy left Georgia for New York City’s Juilliard School at age 16, after which their mothers, who were also friends, kept each apprised of the other’s rise to fame. Years into their careers — McDuffie, as a soloist with top symphonies globally, and Mills, in R.E.M., one of the best-loved rock bands on the planet, reconnected and never forgot the town that first brought them together. (R.E.M. disbanded amicably in 2011 and members often make appearances together.)
Mills said the Grand Opera House in Macon is where he saw Muddy Waters and Count Basie
play in the 1970s and the town “means a lot of different things to me.” McDuffie had said he still romanticizes his status as a Maconite, although he is based in New York.
In 2001, Mills famously invested in McDuffie’s 1735 Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù violin (once played by Nicolò Paganini) as a “way to help my friend maximize his career,” he said.
“When we sell it, you can take me to dinner,” McDuffie quipped to Mills.
The violin has its own bio on McDuffie’s website alongside his hefty list of accolades including rapturous reviews of his fiery, precise and delicate performances by American composers, including Glass and Samuel Barber, the latter for whom McDuffie performed before the composer’s death in 1981, an experience he said changed his life.
Preparing the next generation
McDuffie and Mills acknowledged the way musicians make a living in the 21st century is different from the paths they faced as young artists.
Mills said instant gratification with music streaming everywhere “thins the depth of the attachment to the music,” but that “doesn’t mean people don’t fall in love with bands and songs. They do. I see it every time I play.”
McDuffie said the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings has morphed to fit the times.
“We have accomplished more than we thought we ever would,” McDuffie said. “At the very beginning, it was just to add something beautiful to the city of Macon.”
Now with 27 students and 13 faculty members, McDuffie said he’s proud of how the program, with artistic director Amy Schwartz Moretti, has evolved in its targeted hybrid curriculum for music, liberal arts and business, especially since there’s “more supply than demand” for conservatories without enough jobs for students when they graduate.
“I feel the ones that can really save the classical music model are the musicians themselves,” McDuffie said. “And if they understand how the business works, how nonprofit governance works, they can get to a point where they can determine how their music is played and heard.”
Hanami Froom, a McDuffie Center student violinist from Portland, Ore., who began playing at age 2 and hopes to land an orchestra role or solo career, said performance opportunities like the one Monday night at the Grand Opera House and the attention from faculty make the Center “seem like a dream.”
Kathryn Fakeley, a cellist at the Center who hails from Canada, said she is seeking a master’s degree after graduation. Her favorite work is Elgar’s Cello Concerto, which she played with the MMSO in September, and she said the small size of the school is a good fit for her. “Everyone gets to know each other so well, and you become so close-knit, it’s special to be performing with your friends.”
Isaac Willocks is also Canadian and picked up the violin at age 4 after his mom took him to a Celtic Christmas concert. He hopes for a chamber music career after the Center and to be an educator who shares his love for music. Willocks said he first played the Brahms Symphony No.1 six years ago and was excited to return to it with fellow Center students and the MMSO Monday.
“It has one of the most touching melodies that I can think of, for myself,” he said. “It is such a privilege when I get to that spot in the fourth movement to play it, I feel so honored every time.”
