StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Spotlight on Nicole Mitchell

Today, let's look at some videos featuring flute player and composer Nicole Mitchell, who's coming to St. Louis to perform in a concert presented by New Music Circle on Saturday, March 16 at Xavier Hall on the St. Louis University campus.

Mitchell, who just turned 52 a couple of weeks ago, grew up in New York and California, studying piano and viola before taking up the flute. She attended University of California in San Diego and Oberlin College before moving to Chicago in 1990. There, she connected with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, playing with the all-women AACM ensemble Samana and going on to collaborate with many other affiliated musicians, such as George Lewis, Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, and Muhal Richard Abrams. Mitchell also served a two-year term as chairwoman of the AACM from 2009 to 2010.

She completed her BA at Chicago State University in 1998 and earned her a master's degree at Northern Illinois University two years later. Mitchell began teaching in the late 1990s, first at various universities in the Chicago area and later at University of California, Irvine. She was appointed last year to an endowed chair at the University of Pittsburgh, where she follows the late Geri Allen as head of the jazz studies department.

In addition to performing and teaching, Mitchell also has been a prolific recording artist, releasing more than 20 albums as a leader with various ensembles. Here in St. Louis, she'll be performing with Liberation Narratives, a group featuring the renowned poet Haki Madhubuti.

Though Mitchell and Madhubuti made an album called Liberation Narratives together in 2017, there doesn't seem to be any live performance footage of the group available online. So instead, today you can peruse videos of Mitchell demonstrating her musical range in several different contexts, starting up above with a a solo flute performance shell did in 2014 for the New York Flute Club.

After the jump, you can see Mitchell's set from the 2017 Ojai Music Festival, starting with her playing solo and later performing with members of the Chicago-based International Contemporary Ensemble.

Next, there's a video of Mitchell and trumpeter Christian Pruvost playing a duo set (in the rhythm-section-less AACM tradition) in 2017 at Hyde Park Records.

That's followed by clips of Mitchell playing with three different bands.

First, there's Tiger Trio, with bassist Joelle Leandre and pianist Myra Melford, as recorded in October of last year at Teatro Latea, NYC. Then, it's Sonic Projections, recorded at the 2014 Vision Festival at Roulette in Brooklyn with Mitchell, tenor saxophonist David Boykin, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Chad Taylor.

Finally, there's a sample of what probably is Mitchell's best known band, the Black Earth Ensemble, seen here performing "Meadow Sunlight in the Swinging Fields" in 2012 at Teatro Manzoni in Milano, Italy.

For more about Nicole Mitchell, read the feature about her published in January 2018 by the New York Times; and her interviews with JazzRightNow.com and ICareIfYouListen.com, both from 2017.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...