Nicole Mitchell

Nicole Mitchell is an award-winning creative flutist, composer, bandleader and educator. She initially emerged from Chicago’s innovative music scene in the late 90s, where she became a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and eventually served as the first woman president. Called the “greatest living jazz flutist of her generation” (Chicago Reader), Mitchell has repeatedly been awarded the #1 Jazz Flutist by Downbeat magazine and the Jazz Journalists Association each year from 2010-2020.  For over 20 years, Mitchell’s critically acclaimed Black Earth Ensemble (BEE) has been her primary compositional laboratory, with which she has performed throughout Europe, Canada and the U.S. A United States Artist Fellow (2020), a Doris Duke Artist (2012), and a recipient of the Herb Alpert Award (2011), Mitchell’s research centers on the powerful legacy of contemporary African American culture. As a composer she has been commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Newport Jazz Festival, the Art Institute of Chicago, the French American Jazz Exchange, Chamber Music America, the Chicago Jazz Festival, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and the Chicago Sinfonietta. Mitchell is the William S. Dietrich II Endowed Chair in Jazz Studies and the Director of Jazz Studies at University of Pittsburgh.