ML - Michigan Avenue

2013 - Issue 4 - Summer

Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!

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NICOLE MITCHELL Jazz flutist Nicole Mitchell performs at Constellation on July 26. The greatest living flute in jazz. It was on a college date in the '80s when Nicole Mitchell first took in a Von Freeman jam session at Park Manor's New Apartment Lounge. "It was wall-to-wall people, drenched in joy and smoke," remembers the 46-year-old. "Von spun rich audacious tones and called his 'horses' to come play.... I knew right then that jazz was what I was going to be a part of." Jazz flutist and composer Mitchell's innovative style has been recognized: Since 2010 she has won annual top flutist honors from both the Jazz Journalists Association and DownBeat magazine's critics poll. Her Black Earth Ensemble and Indigo Trio have been regulars at festivals throughout the US and Europe; Chicago Reader critic Peter Margasak said she was "on her way to becoming the greatest living flutist in jazz"; and she won the Herb Alpert Foundation's 2011 Alpert Award, a $75,000 prize for midcareer artists "respected for their creativity, ingenuity, and bodies of work." Moreover, her new releases—such as 2013's Aquarius (Delmark) by Ice Crystal (with Joshua Abrams, Frank Rosaly, Jason Adasiewicz)—earn rave reviews in the jazz press. Classically trained, Mitchell began busking as an improviser as a teen in San Diego. After a stint at Oberlin College, her passion found her carving a role in Chicago clubs of the '90s such as the Velvet Lounge. She cofounded Samana, the first allfemale group in the history of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), where she would later become president, and later the Black Earth Ensemble, which performs her ebullient, original compositions, such as Xenogenesis Suite (2008)—inspired by the science fiction of Octavia Butler. "I always knew that my role would be to bring something new," she says, "to contribute something to improvised flute and to the conversation that we call jazz." After a decade of teaching in Chicago, Mitchell is now an assistant professor in a new composition and improvisation program at the University of California, Irvine—but she says "much of my heart" is still in the Windy City, where she maintains bands Ice Crystal, Black Earth Ensemble, and Black Earth Strings, and has a show at Constellation on July 26 and additional gigs at Constellation and Studio 914 in September. "If someone won't open the door," attests Mitchell, "in Chicago, if you stay positive and determined, you can find a way to open the door yourself." nicolemitchell.com 120 MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM 116-121_MA_FEAT_Jazz_SUMMER13.indd 120 6/18/13 12:38 PM

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