The Hermitage Artist Retreat, in collaboration with the Philadelphia-based Greenfield Foundation, has selected sound and music artist Rucyl Mills as the winner of the 2025 Hermitage Greenfield Prize. The prize is awarded annually, rotating between the fields of music, theater, and visual art. Mills will receive a six-week Hermitage fellowship and a $35,000 commission to create a new work of music, which will have its first public presentation in Sarasota in 2027.

Mills' musical compositions blend noise art, bass wave, sample collage and avant-garde R&B. She uses MIDI controllers, drone synths and effects processors to create experimental compositions that are kinetic architectures for stage and film. Inspired by the experimental jazz musician Sun Ra, Mills co-founded Saturn Never Sleeps, an improvisational futuretronic label and audiovisual group. She's also created interactive musical experiences, including the "Chakakhantroller," a wearable MIDI controller for solo audiovisual performance; and “Sound Prism,” a solar-powered interactive installation that explores sound as a physical representation of the frequencies of the color spectrum.

Mills was selected by a jury that included Amy Cassello, artistic Director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM); Lia Camille Crockett, the founder of Parcha Projects and music curator for organizations such as NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest and SXSW; and Grammy Award-winning conductor and composer Robert Spano, music director at the Aspen Music Festival and music director laureate for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. 

“I am so honored to receive this award,” Mills says. “Creating a new piece at the Hermitage will provide such a fertile and enriching environment with no distraction. I am thrilled to be able to further evolve my personal relationship to sound in a space where so many incredible artists have created before me.”

For her Hermitage commission, Mills plans to create a notational score and
composition that investigates our relationship to superstructures, both physically and sonically. Superstructures constitute a major part of the universe; they are so massive that they challenge our understanding of how our universe evolved.

“Sound, in the conventional sense, does not travel through the vacuum of space,” Mills says. “It requires a medium like air or water to propagate. Superstructures interact in ways that can be interpreted as vibrations or waves, which are analogous to sound in certain contexts.” She'll create a score that maps waves of pressure and gravity on to sonic frequencies, turning Quipu data into audio signals
for the audience to interpret, allowing the listener to "hear" cosmic events using electronic instruments. Quipu—a string of galaxy clusters—was discovered in 2024 and is thought to be the largest superstructure discovered to date.

Mills will be celebrated at the Hermitage Greenfield Prize Dinner on Sunday,
April 6, at 6 p.m. at Michael’s on East. Three other finalists for the 2025 Hermitage Greenfield Prize include Samora Pinderhughes, an Emmy Award-winning composer and multidisciplinary artist; Xenia Rubinos, a New York-based vocalist, composer, and performing artist; and Conrad Tao, an award-winning composer, pianist, and Hermitage alumnus. All three will receive a Hermitage residency in addition to a finalist prize of $1,000.