Nicole Mitchell

Nicole Mitchell website

• projects as a leader/co-leader •

«Davis began his own, "Of Blues & Dreams" with rhapsodic flourishes - he made the Steinway grand sing like an angel - and, when Mitchell joined him, her velvety-toned melodic gestures soared, swooped, growled and cooed. Davis composes like an improviser and improvises like a composer. His signature piece had plenty of room to branch off into different moods and textures giving Mitchell wide multiples from which to expand. Dynamics were explored in the fullest sense - and when it got quiet - Mitchell responded with breathy overtones and tiny whistle-stops. She even sang into the flute shooting skeins of moaning, yelping multiphonics».
Robert Bush, San Diego Reader

Black Earth SWAY sings liberation through rachet-folk-futurism, in the celebration of open spirits and sisterhood. Jazzmen from the ages have insisted on their power to swing. In contrast, the sisters of Black Earth claim their power to SWAY. Black Earth SWAY is a platform for new mythologies in Black American storytelling which traverses raw languages of the AACM blues.

Malian master kora player and composer Ballaké Sissoko with flutist and composer Nicole Mitchell co-lead this international ensemble, a cultural dialogue of West African griot music and Chicago creative music. Joining the bandleaders are members of Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble and Malian musicians Fassery Diabaté, and Fatim Kouyate.

Co-Created by Nicole Mitchell & Lisa E. Harris the work of award-winning Black science fiction author, Octavia E. Butler, becomes increasingly prophetic as we move through the challenges of the new century. Her novels Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1996) use fiction to illuminate a horrific unraveling of 21st-century America into a despotic chaos. Inspired by this work, Mitchell and Harris respond to new times with a new sound

• projects as a sideperson •

• video •

• discography •

• biography, awards, interviews and press quotes •

Nicole M. Mitchell is an award-winning creative flutist, composer, bandleader and educator.
She is perhaps best known for her work as a flutist, having developed a unique improvisational language and having been repeatedly awarded “Top Flutist of the Year” by Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll and the Jazz Journalists Association (2010-2017).
Called the "greatest living jazz flutist of her generation" (Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader), Mitchell has repeatedly been awarded #1 Jazz Flutist by Downbeat magazine and the Jazz Journalists Association each year from 2010-2020.
Mitchell's research centers on the powerful legacy of contemporary African American culture.
She initially emerged from Chicago's innovative music scene in the late 90s, where she became a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and eventually served as the first woman president.
She is the founder of critically acclaimed Black Earth Ensemble, Black Earth Strings, Sonic Projections and Ice Crystal, and she composes for contemporary ensembles of varied instrumentation and size, while incorporating improvisation and a wide aesthetic expression.
The former first woman president of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Mitchell celebrates endless possibility by “creating visionary worlds through music that bridge the familiar with the unknown.” Some of her newest work with Black Earth Ensemble explores intercultural collaborations.
Recently she celebrated a compositional premiere with Procession Time, a suite inspired by the work of Harlem Renaissance artist Norman Lewis, that was performed by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and conducted by Steve Schick in October 2017. Mitchell has also recently been interested in multidisciplinary work, through the incorporation of original video art with her music (Mandorla Awakening I and II, Interdimensional Interplay for Solo Disklavier and Prerecorded Flute).
In January 2018, Mitchell was the Artist in Residence at New York’s Winter Jazz Fest, where she performed four suites of her compositions, including Art and Anthem (for poet Gwendolyn Brooks), Maroon Cloud (inspired by her writing “What Was Feared Lost” from Arcana VIII edited by John Zorn), Pteradatyl, a new trio with vocalist Sara Serpa and Liberty Ellman, and her latest Afrofuturist suite, Mandorla Awakening, which was cited as a top jazz recording in the New York Times and the LA Times for 2017.
As a composer, she has been commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago, the Stone, the Newport Jazz Festival, the French American Jazz Exchange, Chamber Music America (New Works), the Chicago Jazz Festival, ICE, and the Chicago Sinfonietta.
She has performed with creative music luminaries including Craig Taborn, Roscoe Mitchell, Joelle Leandre, Anthony Braxton, Geri Allen, George Lewis, Mark Dresser, Steve Coleman, Anthony Davis, Myra Melford, Bill Dixon, Muhal Richard Abrams, Ed Wilkerson, Rob Mazurek and Hamid Drake.
She is a recipient of the United States Artist Fellow (2020), Herb Alpert Award (2011), the Chicago 3Arts Award (2011) and the Doris Duke Artist Award (2012).
She is a professor of music, the William S. Dietrich II Endowed Chair in Jazz Studies and the Director of Jazz Studies at University of Pittsburgh. Previously she was a Professor of Music at University of California, Irvine, teaching composition and improvisation in the graduate program of Integrated Composition, Improvisation and Technology (ICIT) for several years.

Awards

List of Works

Interviews

Curriculum Vitae

Press Quotes