Nicole Mitchell (musician)

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Nicole Mitchell (b. 1966 or 1967) is an American jazz flautist.

[edit] Biography

Mitchell was born in Syracuse, New York, where she was raised until age eight, when her family moved to Anaheim, California. Her first instruments were piano and violin, which she started playing in fourth grade. She was classically trained in flute and played in youth orchestras as a teenager. Though she initially had intended to major in mathematics in college, she took a class in jazz music from Jimmy Cheatham while a college student at University of California in San Diego, and took to busking in the streets playing jazz flute.^[1] After two years at UCSD, she transferred to Oberlin College in 1987.

In 1990 she moved to Chicago, where she played on the streets and worked for Third World Press, a publishing house devoted to black culture.^[1] She met members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and soon started playing with the all-women ensemble Samana under the AACM umbrella. In 1992 she left Chicago, living in California and New Orleans, and gave birth in 1994. She returned to school in 1993 and then again in 1996, completing her BA at Chicago State University in 1998; she earned her Master's from Northern Illinois University in 2000.^[1] She met Hamid Drake in 1995 and worked with him extensively in the second half of the decade. In 1997 she began an association with saxophonist David Boykin, who encouraged her to start her own group, which she called the Black Earth Ensemble.

Mitchell began teaching at Chicago area institutions at the end of the 1990s, holding positions at Northern Illinois, Chicago State, Northeastern Illinois University, Wheaton College, and UIC. She issued her debut album (with the Black Earth Ensemble) in 2001, entitled Vision Quest on her own label, Dreamtime Records. The album included appearances from Drake, violinist Savoir Faire, Edith Yokley, Darius Savage, and Avreeayl Ra.^[2] Vision Quest was expanded into a theater piece in 2003.

Down Beat named her the "Rising Star" for flautists in 2004, 2005, and 2006. She has been co-president of the AACM since 2006. In 2006 she also worked in the collective Frequency with Harrison Bankhead, Ed Wilkerson, and Avreeayl Ra for an album released on Thrill Jockey.