Nicole Mitchell is an award-winning flutist, composer, bandleader and educator. She is perhaps best known for her work as a flutist, having developed a distinct improvisational language and having been repeatedly named Top Flutist of the Year in DownBeat Magazine Critics’ Poll and by the Jazz Journalists Association.
Mitchell initially emerged from Chicago’s innovative music scene in the late ’90s. She started with Maia and Shanta Nurullah in Samana (the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians’ first all-woman ensemble) and as a member of the David Boykin EXPANSE.
Her music celebrates contemporary African American culture. She is the founder of 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: Bamako Chicago, featuring Malian kora master Ballake Sissoko and Mandorla Awakening with Kojiro Umezaki (shakuhachi) and Tatsu Aoki (taiko, bass, shamisen).
As a composer, Mitchell has been commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago, the Stone, the French American Jazz Exchange, Chamber Music America (New Works), the Chicago Jazz Festival, ICE and the Chicago Sinfonietta. Mitchell 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, Billy Childs and Hamid Drake.
She is a recipient of the Herb Alpert Award (2011), the Chicago 3Arts Award (2011), the Doris Duke Artist Award (2012) and the United States Artist Award (2020). Mitchell is a professor of music at the University of Virginia; she previously taught at University of California-Irvine and the University of Pittsburgh.
Please note: Biographies are based on information provided to the CSOA by the artists or their representatives. More current information may be available on websites of the artists or their management.
