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Award-winning flutist, composer, conductor, and the first woman president of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians Nicole Mitchell was born on February 17, 1967, in Syracuse, New York, to Joan Beard Mitchell, an artist and poet. She was reared in Anaheim, California. At nine, Mitchell began piano and viola and quickly excelled. During her teenage years, she began classical flute studies.
After graduating from high school in 1985, Mitchell enrolled at the University of California at San Diego. She transferred to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio in 1987 but left shortly afterward to freelance in Chicago, Illinois. There, she enrolled in Chicago State University in 1993 and received a Bachelor of Arts in Music with the principal instrument of Flute in 1998. Two years later in 2000, she earned a Master of Music in Flute Performance from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.
In 2001 Mitchell released her debut album, Vision Quest, on Dreamtime Records label, which marked the beginning of her solo career. Between 2001 and 2007, Mitchell taught General Music and Jazz History at Northeastern Illinois University. During that period, she was also an instructor in Music Theory at Chicago State University. This overlapped with her position as Director of the Jazz Band at Wheaton College in Chicago and an Adjunct at the University of Illinois. In addition to these roles, Mitchell is also the founder of the Chicago Creative Music Institute, an organization dedicated to promoting and supporting experimental and innovative music in the Chicago area.
From 2008 to 2011, Michell worked as a part-time faculty member at the Chicago High School for the Arts. Afterward, she became an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of California at Irvine. In 2017, Mitchell released her groundbreaking tenth album, Mandorla Awakening, on FPE Records. This album, a pioneering blend of Afrofuturism and intercultural collaboration, was a testament to Mitchell’s innovative approach to music. The New York Times recognized its significance by selecting it as the number-one jazz album of the year.
A recipient of numerous awards, Mitchell was named “Top Flutist of the Year” by Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll and the Jazz Journalists Association. She has also received the Herb Alpert Award, the Chicago 3Arts Award, the 3Arts Ragdale Residency Award, the Doris Duke Artist Award, the Champion of New Music Award from the American Composers Forum, the Alpert Ucross Residency Prize, the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for Music Composition, and the United States Artist Award. In addition, she has been commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chamber Music of America, the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Chicago Jazz Festival, the French American Jazz Exchange, the French Ministry of Culture, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Newport Jazz Festival.
Nicole M. Mitchell, who was married to Calvin Bernard Gantt, is a Professor of Music at the University of Virginia after a brief stint at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2022, her book The Mandorla Letters: for the Hopeful, has been described as part memoir, part manifesto, part Black speculative novella, was released through The Green Lantern Press under the name Nicole Mitchell Gantt. The book is a unique blend of personal narrative, philosophical reflection, and speculative fiction, offering a thought-provoking exploration of hope and possibility in the context of the Black experience.
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“Nicole Mitchell,” https://www.chicagotribune.com/2013/09/05/nicole-mitchell-explores-the-story-of-her-mother-through-music/;
“Nicole Mitchell,” https://music.arts.uci.edu/faculty/nicole-mitchell;
“Nicole Mitchell Gantt,” https://americanstudies.as.virginia.edu/people/nicole-mitchell-gantt.
