Nicole Margaret Mitchell has been noted as “a compelling improviser of wit, determination, positivity, and tremendous talent... on her way to becoming one of the greatest living flutists in jazz.”
(Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader).
A creative flutist, composer and bandleader, Mitchell placed first as Downbeat magazine’s "Rising Star Flutist 2005-2008, was awarded "Jazz Flutist of the Year 2008"by the Jazz Journalist Association and ““Chicagoan of the Year 2006” by the Chicago Tribune.
The founder of the critically acclaimed Black Earth Ensemble and Black Earth Strings, Mitchell’s compositions reach across sound worlds, integrating new ideas with moments in the legacy of jazz, gospel, pop, and African percussion to create a fascinating synthesis of “postmodern jazz.” With her ensembles, as a featured flutist, and as a music educator, Mitchell has been a highlight at art venues, festivals throughout Europe, the U.S. and Canada. Mitchell has performed with creative luminaries including George Lewis, Miya Masaoka, Lori Freedman, James Newton, Bill Dixon and Muhal Richard Abrams.
She also works on ongoing projects with Anthony Braxton, Ed Wilkerson, David Boykin, Rob Mazurek, Hamid Drake and Arveeayl Ra. Co-President of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Mitchell works to raise respect and integrity for the improvised flute, to contribute her innovative voice to the jazz legacy, and to continue the bold and exciting directions that the AACM has charted for decades.
Recent highlights for Mitchell include a commission from the Chicago Cultural Center and the Jazz Institute of Chicago for Black Earth Orchestra and premiere of Many Paths to the Sea: A Tribute to Alice Coltrane, a chamber orchestra commission/premiere from Downtown Sound Gallery (Chicago) for Qualities of My Father, a tribute to Mitchell's father, the commission/premiere of Xenogenesis Suite, an award winning sci-fi writer and Afrofuturist, Octavia Butler by Chamber Music America (through the generous support of Doris Duke Foundation), a premiere of new music for award-winning poet Haki R. Madhubuti and the founding of new projects including the Nicole Mitchell Quartet, and Sonic Projections. Mitchell also currently directs the Wheaton Jazz Ensemble at Wheaton College and teaches jazz history at University of Illinois, Chicago.
Director
Black Earth Ensemble (BEE), founded by Mitchell in 1997, is a forum for her compositions and creative vision. BEE is a multi-genre, multi-generational celebration of the African American cultural legaacy. Notable performances for Black Earth Ensemble include the Sons d'hiver Festival (Paris), Guelph Festival (Canada), Le Labbre Nude Festival (Rome), Kerava Jazz Festival (Finland), Vision Festival (New York) and Nouve Forme Festival (Verona).
With Black Earth Ensemble, Mitchell has recorded five critically acclaimed CDs with her Black Earth Ensemble: Vision Quest, Afrika Rising and Hope, Future and Destiny. Black Unstoppable was Mitchell's debut on Chicago's legendary Delmark Records, and she was the first woman instrumentalist/leader to join their roster in their 55 year history. Her recording "Xenogenesis Suite: A Tribute to Octavia Butler" is available on Firehouse 12. Mitchell also leads Black Earth Strings, an acoustic quartet that brings African rhythms, contemporary sounds and swinging improvisation to a chamber music setting. Delmark will release Black Earth Strings debut album "Renegades" in 2009.
Flute Soloist
Nicole Mitchell has performed as featured soloist with the Orbert Davis Chicago Jazz Philharmonic at the Auditorium Theater and at Millineum Park in Chicago. In December 2005, Nicole Mitchell performed a special duo concert with pianist Muhal Richard Abrams in celebration of the AACM's 40th Anniversary in Chicago.
Mitchell has also performed as a soloist with composer George E. Lewis and the International Composer's and Improvisers Ensemble (2003) in Munich, Germany. In Chicago, Mitchell has also been a featured soloist with Chicago's CUBE Ensemble, University of Chicago's Jazz X-Tet, and the New Black Repertory Ensemble of Columbia College.
Mitchell is also piccolist for the Chicago Sinfonietta conducted by Maestro Paul Freedman and performs for the Joffrey Ballet.
Composer
Nicole Mitchell premiered “Xenogenesis Suite at the 2007 Vision Festival in New York” - pieces inspired from science fiction writer Octavia Butler's award winning novel "Dawn." This work has been commissioned by Chamber Music America's New Works: Creation and Presentation Program funded through the generosity of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Xenogenesis Suite was released by Firehouse 12 in spring 2008.
In August 2007, Nicole Mitchell premiered Black Earth Orchestra at Chicago's beautiful Millineum Park with a new suite written in tribute to the late Alice Coltrane. Many Paths Meet the Sea performed for an audience of 4000 and received positive reviews. Mitchell has been Illinois Arts Council fellow for music composition (2005, 2002).
Her piece "Dream Deferred for piano" inspired by Robert Shumann's "Scenes from Childhood," premiered at Ravinia in fall 2006. In November 2003, Mitchell unveiled Vision Quest: Hope, Future and Destiny (VQ), a multi-dimensional community project featuring Black Earth Ensemble and a cast of over fifty people in dance, video, acting with live music. This major project was sponsored by the Jazz Institute of Chicago through the support of the Illinois Arts Council.
Additional Projects
Mitchell currently directs other projects which include: Tindanga Mama (a multi-generational, all-woman ensemble) and the Aaya Sensation (a group showcasing the talents of Mitchell's teen daughter). In addition to her own projects, she performs with the collective, Frequency (with Ed Wilkerson Jr., Arveeayl Ra and Harrison Bankhead), the Indigo Trio (with Hamid Drake and Harrison Bankhead), the Exploding Star Orchestra (project of Rob Mazurek), the Orbert Davis Jazz Philharmonic, the New Black Reperatory Ensemble (of Columbia College), the Great Black Music Ensemble (of the Chicago AACM), the David Boykin Expanse, and Anthony Braxton's 12tet.
Educator
Mitchell has done a variety of residencies, workshops and panel discussions in Europe and the U.S. with a focus on composition, jazz and creative music. Mitchell has also done workshops and residencies at University of Guelph (Canada), University of Louieville, Dartmouth College, Howard University, Amherst College, South Suburban College of Illinois and University of Michigan: Ann Arbor.
In 2009, Mitchell looks forward to doing composer residencies at California State University Fullerton and University of New Mexico. In April 2007, Mitchell completed a residency with forty local musicians in Paris. The project, called Unity Orchestra, featured her compositions at the Banlieues Bleues festival.
She has been a faculty member of the Vancouver Creative Music Institute (Canada) and the Sherwood Flute Institute (Chicago). From 2006-2008, Mitchell has done a residency with the Vancouver Jazz Festival, working with a large ensemble of talented high school musicians and directing their performance at the Vancouver Jazz Festival.
At home in Chicago, Mitchell is part-time jazz faculty of University of Illinois, Circle and directs the Jazz Ensemble at Wheaton College.
PROJECTS
INDIGO TRIO
Nicole Mitchell - Flute, Voice;
Harrison Bankhead - Double bass;
Hamid Drake – Voice, Drums, Frame drums.
Flutist of the year by Jazz Journalist Association, top ten raising stars Jazz Composers and first flute (for the fourth time) by Downbeat Critics Poll for 2008. Downbeat: Nicole Mitchell is the year artist!
Indigo is one of the more beautiful colors that human ingenuity has refined from nature. From ancient times the peoples of western Afrika, China, and Japan succeeded in extracting indigo dye from the plant of the same name.
The Yoruba of Nigeria and the Manding of Mali were known to have extraordinary facilities in combining the dye with textiles to create exquisite woven cloth. Until the invention of blue jeans, those who wore indigo-dyed clothes were typically the royalty and privileged of many ancient societies.
Indigo is dark and cool, yet it possesses energy-generating luminosity. The power of color was not lost on the English scientist-philosopher Isaac Newton (1643-1727). He believed that sound and light were physically similar.
He postulated that indigo was one of the seven primary colors matching the seven notes of the western major musical scale. Cotton was not the only crop that propelled international economies based on slavery.
Indigo plantations were big business in colonial Jamaica and South Carolina. The people whose hands were drenched in indigo dye also brought their music, a music that over the course of centuries developed into the distinctive Afro-American forms of blues, spirituals, and jazz.
The blues could have rightfully been called the indigoes, but that is not the way it happened even though Duke Ellington’s 1931 “Mood Indigo” had a lyric that contained an apt description “bluer than blue” that Isaac Newton might have appreciated.
The name of Indigo Trio puts together tree absolute talents of the Afroamerican contemporary music scene. This is a music made by people who have the shaman spirit inside them, musicians who excite an audience into high energy states.
In their performances there is the influence of the ethnic music imagined by Yusef Lateef and of the playfull blues of Rahsaan Roland Kirk: pushed by the powerful lines of bass created by Bankhead and by the groove put into motion by the drums of Drake, Mitchell plays melodies that recall the soul tradition but also long, very rapid, sequences of brilliant notes placed with precision on the rhythmic torrent.
