{"id":9490,"date":"2017-12-07T19:14:22","date_gmt":"2017-12-07T19:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=9490"},"modified":"2017-12-09T16:48:31","modified_gmt":"2017-12-09T16:48:31","slug":"flutist-composer-nicole-mitchell-brings-her-utopian-vision-to-milwaukee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=9490","title":{"rendered":"Flutist-composer Nicole Mitchell brings her utopian vision to Milwaukee"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Fb-Button\"\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>
<\/fb:like><\/div>
<\/div><\/div>

\"\"<\/p>\n

Nicole Mitchell. Photo by Lauren Deutsch courtesy chicagojazz.net\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Nicole Mitchell Quartet, Woodland Pattern Book Center<\/strong>, 720 E. Locust St., Alternating Currents Live Series, 7 p.m. Sunday, December 10, $8 general admission, $7 student & seniors, $6 WPBC members<\/p>\n

Alex Wing<\/strong>– bass
\nFelton Offard<\/strong>\u00a0– guitar
\nJovia Armstrong<\/strong>\u00a0– percussion
\nNicole MItchell\u00a0<\/strong>– flutes, compositions<\/p>\n

Flutist-composer Nicole Mitchell sounds like the pied piper to a new future, a utopian dream melding human courage, advanced technology and nature.<\/p>\n

She’s extraordinary because, despite its radiant qualities, the flute has occupied a comparatively humble place in both jazz, classical and pop music, all too often being a refuge, and a musical ghetto, for women musicians.<\/p>\n

In the post-bop jazz era, the instrument found some footing, as some multi-instrumentalists helped advance the flute\u2019s sonic and expressive possibilities, including Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Eric Dolphy, and Lew Tabackin, and Herbie Mann showed the flute could thrive in funky groove-oriented realms. Flutist Jeremy Steig revealed a more adventurous imagination, perhaps a precursor to Mitchell. In the 1970s, a black female jazz-pop flutist also emerged, Bobbi Humphrey.<\/p>\n

Starting in the late 1970s, James Newton expanded on the more classical flute technique Hubert Laws had applied to jazz and became among the first to make ambitious, stately and highly-textural original statements focussed on the instrument, and to extend the jazz tradition.<\/p>\n

In recent times, however, no one has taken the slender, silver sound-mover further than California-born Chicagoan Nicole Mitchell. She reminds us the flute conveys among the most celestial of sounds but also, in its closeness to pure breath, among the most human and organic. The elastic space across that spectrum actually holds powers of great, moving evocation and beauty, a region she has consistently explored and expanded.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Nicole Mitchell. Courtesy www.chicagojazz.net<\/em><\/p>\n

She\u2019s become also an increasingly conceptual artist. Now, her most recent album, Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds<\/em>\u00a0(FPE Records), amounts to a stunning and transporting culmination of her efforts to weave a majestic tapestry of jazz, gospel, experimentalism, pop and African percussion — through albums such as\u00a0Black Unstoppable<\/em>\u00a0(Delmark, 2007),\u00a0Awakening\u00a0<\/em>(Delmark, 2011), and\u00a0Xenogenesis Suite: A Tribute to Octavia Butler<\/em>\u00a0(Firehouse 12, 2008), which received commissioning support from Chamber Music America\u2019s New Jazz Works.<\/p>\n

Mitchell also has served as the first woman president of Chicago’s internationally-influential \u00a0Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Among AACM musicians who also advanced the role of flute are Henry Threadgill and Anthony Braxton. But the expansiveness of Mitchell\u2019s vision seems more akin to pre-AACM space-jazz bandleader Sun Ra and perhaps Pulitzer-winning AACM brass player-composer Wadada Leo Smith.<\/p>\n

None of these predecessors diminish the originality of Mitchell\u2019s artistic quest. She is currently a Professor of Music, teaching in “Integrated Composition, Improvisation and Technology,” (ICIT) a new cutting-edge graduate program at the University of California, Irvine.\u00a0Mitchell has received the\u00a0DownBeat<\/em>\u00a0Critics Poll and the Jazz Journalists Association awards as \u201cTop Flutist of the Year\u201d for four consecutive years (2010-2014) and again in 2017, from the JJA. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago commissioned Mandorla.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“Mandorla Awakening II” album cover. Courtesy FPE Records.<\/em><\/p>\n

In her liner notes, Mitchell describes Mandorla as a society formed on \u201can obscure island in the Atlantic\u201d in 2099. Amid the \u201cinevitable decay\u201d of contemporary society, \u201ca vibrant, diverse, and technologically adept culture emerges\u2026an egalitarian society designed by people who had survived the destructive forces of the egos war and the global virus .\u201d<\/p>\n

The more specific musical story poetically describes Mandorla as possible by the striving for \u201cthe sound of truth\u201d generated by \u201csticking our hands in the black soil\u201d and allowing birds to \u201csing interlocking songs of imagination.\u201d The sound seems \u201cthe one thread we hold to pull (to safety) our loved ones dangling over the cliff, close to peril and poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n

So one can readily imagine interlocking birdsong evoked by her flute, but the album\u2019s larger ensemble canvas also entails, in the piece \u201cTimewrap,\u201d \u00a0(Or \u201ctimewarp?\u201d her titles tend to wordplay), \u00a0a moan, engendered from the history of slavery, from blood in the fields, from perhaps Toni Morrison\u2019s ghostly, tragic Beloved<\/em>. \u201cThat moan was a seed of liberation.\u201d Mitchell writes. \u201cThat moan love for life. That moan is determination. That moan has been a grain of sand that calls our destiny and survival of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Mandorla<\/em> opens with \u201cEgoes War,\u201d a pulse, big sonic texture, a thick wash of electronic and acoustic effects. A forlorn theme emerges on flute, sounding both ancient and futuristic. The guitar is a space traveler or an ego tripper. (Alex Wing, who plays guitar, oud, and theremin on the album, will be part of Mitchell\u2019s quartet here, along with guitarist<\/p>\n

Felton Offard and the album\u2019s percussionist Jovia Armstrong). This piece does sound warlike, but strangely beautiful. Mitchell\u2019s tone and wary flute theme spiral into the toxic haze like a shaman-goddess working to ease the bloodletting, perhaps allowing a purging of toxins. A descending line repeats like a gentle, insistent jeremiad. Percussion work sizzles and crackles like wildfire of fear and perhaps hope.<\/p>\n

The second piece \u201cSub-Mission” starts tentatively, with shakuhachi flute, oud, and other AACM-ish \u201clittle instruments.\u201d The foundlings of the vibrant, multi-cultural \u201ctechnologically adept\u201d culture are emerging on the remote Atlantic island. Mitchell\u2019s flute sounds like an explorer on this island, a violin also wends its way through the uncertainty, the flute emboldens with full-throated courage. Then, a pirouetting, lyrical dance arises among the instruments, followed by a somewhat ominous interlude set against Tomeka Reid\u2019s cello, which spawns its own strange beauty. This all suggests facing the challenge of letting go of old ways and submitting to the possibility of a new, enlightened society.<\/p>\n

Plenty more ensues in Mandorla Awakening<\/em>, including several vocals to advance the drama and storyline. But I\u2019ll leave the discovery of that to you, and to those parts of Mandorla<\/em> that may ensue at Sunday\u2019s concert.<\/p>\n

In this age of Trump and regressive, authoritarian politics, her sort of creative consciousness feels urgent, replenishing, empowering.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake; Nicole Mitchell is out there, forging ahead, her talismanic flute catching the light of a new dawn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicole Mitchell. Photo by Lauren Deutsch courtesy chicagojazz.net\u00a0\u00a0 Nicole Mitchell Quartet, Woodland Pattern Book Center, 720 E. Locust St., Alternating Currents Live Series, 7 p.m. Sunday, December 10, $8 general admission, $7 student & seniors, $6 WPBC members Alex Wing– … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-2t4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9490"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9507,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9490\/revisions\/9507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}