Nicole Mitchell

Nicole Mitchell is an award-winning creative flutist, conceptualist and composer. Having emerged from Chicago’s creative music community in the 90’s, she is the former first woman president of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Mitchell has utilized her art to create alternative worlds that “bridge the familiar with the unknown,” with her Black Earth Ensemble. She also composes for contemporary ensembles of varied instrumentation and size while incorporating improvisation and a wide aesthetic expression. As a soloist, bandleader and improviser, she has repeatedly performed throughout Europe, Canada and the U.S. since the early 2000’s. Mitchell has been commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, Chicago Symphony’s MusicNOW, the Fromm Music Foundation, the Newport Jazz Festival, the French American Jazz Exchange, Chamber Music America, and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). She is a recipient of several awards, including Doris Duke Artist Award, the United States Artist Award, the Herb Alpert, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. Nicole Mitchell is a professor of Music at University of Virginia. Her first book, The Mandorla Letters, was published in 2022 by Green Lantern and the University of Minnesota Press.