Artifacts + Dal Niente: Works by Nicole Mitchell

Saturday, September 23

TIMEs: 5:00-6:00pm

VENUE: logan center performance hall. 915 east 60th st.

Twenty-three of the Ensemble Dal Niente band members posing together, followed by an image of three of the band members in a field with a metal sculpture behind them.

Band members of Ensemble Dal Niente posing together, followed by an image of three of the Artifacts band members in a field with a metal sculpture behind them.

ENSEMBLE DAL NIENTE

Ensemble Dal Niente will welcome creative flutist and composer Nicole Mitchell home by premiering two new works at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival:

South Side Love Letter (world premiere), Mitchell’s tribute to Chicago for ensemble and electronics, will be followed by Decolonizing Beauty (U.S. premiere) for Artifacts Trio with chamber orchestra. For the performance of Decolonizing Beauty, Ensemble Dal Niente will be joined by DePaul University School of Music's Ensemble 20+.

Southside Love Letter (World Premiere)

Growing up, the southside of Chicago was the space that I most felt loved. My grandparents were part of the Great Migration in the 1920s. My mother grew up on the southside until the 1950s. Then, in 1990, I moved to Chicago and for over 20 years was swept into its cultural power. Even after relocating, it continues to be a home and center of my musical activity. Southside Love Letter is a “thank you” to the southside for nurturing me as a person and artist. I first discovered my love for jazz at Von Freeman's jam session at the New Apartment Lounge and with Bunky Greene's jazz band at Chicago State University, before becoming a part of Fred Anderson's School of the Velvet Lounge and joining the AACM. Southside Love Letter is a piece that continues to grow in my use of electronically processed field recordings that touch some moments of my inspiration there. It's an honor to premiere this work in Woodlawn, my favorite Chicago neighborhood, at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, with such a great group of music manifestors, Ensemble Dal Niente. Southside Love Letter was made possible by a commission from the Fromm Music Foundation.

  • Nicole M Mitchell

Decolonizing Beauty (U.S. Premiere)

When I composed Decolonizing Beauty for String Orchestra, Percussion, and Artifacts Trio, I was thinking a lot about community convergence, cultural convergence, and musical convergence. I was in Northern California writing this work in October 2019 when 75,000 acres were burning down, 180,000 people were evacuated, and 2.3 million people were without power. We are seeing that resources are running out, the earth is angry, and political systems are unraveling. Our resilience and our ability to help and support each other is key to us entering a new chapter for humanity, so I tried, perhaps more than usual, to pour my love and joy into this music, because that’s what we seem to be lacking these days.

Some of the most inspiring voices that give me hope in this time period are Ingrid Lafleur and Adrienne Maree Brown, African-American women who have found ways to use Afrofuturism as a vehicle to reshape our future in real-time. Both of them talk about how important it is for each of us to stop all the small ways we perpetuate hierarchy and negativity in the daily choices we make in our lives. In order for us to create a new paradigm, Brown and Lafleur both speak of the need for us to decolonize our minds. There is hardly anyone who is not mentally (if not physically) colonized at this moment—we contribute to a system of hierarchal values that rewards some over others in unfair ways. The song (movement) titles reflect my imaginings of what we might have without the presence of colonization/hierarchy.

Symbolically and ironically, the sound of the Western string orchestra music represents the period of colonization’s beginnings, while it is also something beautiful from human culture that I would like to see survive into the new chapter. I've always loved orchestral music, having been exposed to it from early childhood by my father, who played it constantly on the radio. Decolonizing Beauty merges the Western classical idiom with creative music improvisations, as a way of reaching for what I call the "edge of beauty"—a beauty that goes beyond the Western to be more inclusive, This shortened version of Decolonizing Beauty features Artifacts trio, my friends and AACM comrades whom we have worked with over many years. Tomeka Reid on cello, myself on flute, and Mike Reed on drumset with Dal Niente and DePaul Ensemble 20+ string orchestra. Decolonizing Beauty was Commissioned by the National Forum of Music, Wroclaw, Poland for Jazztopad Festival, 2019.

  • Nicole M Mitchell

Ensemble Dal Niente

Ensemble Dal Niente’s roster of 26 musicians presents an uncommonly broad range of contemporary music, exploring new and experimental chamber music with dedication, virtuosity, and an exploratory spirit. 

Now in its second decade, Ensemble Dal Niente has performed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC; The Foro Internacional de Música Nueva in Mexico City; Radialsystem Berlin, MusicArte Festival in Panama City; The Library of Congress and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.; the Art Institute of Chicago and the Hyde Park Jazz Festival in Chicago; Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles; The Americas Society; and the Darmstadt Summer Courses in Germany. The ensemble has held residencies at The University of Chicago, Harvard University, Stanford University, Brown University, Brandeis University, and Northwestern University, among others, and collaborated with a wide range of composers, including Enno Poppe, George Lewis, Hilda Paredes, and Roscoe Mitchell.

The ensemble's name, Dal Niente (“from nothing” in Italian), is a tribute to Helmut Lachenmann's Dal niente (Interieur III), a work that upended traditional conceptions of instrumental technique. It is also a reference to the group’s humble beginnings.

Artifacts Trio

The Artifacts Trio–made up of flutist, vocalist, and electronicist Nicole Mitchell, cellist Tomeka Reid, and drummer Mike Reed–first joined forces to mark the 50th anniversary of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, of which all three are third-generation members. 

Originally, the group performed only compositions that had been written and performed by AACM notables, including Anthony Braxton, Fred Anderson, Leroy Jenkins, Edward Wilderson Jr., Roscoe Mitchell, and Amina Claudine Myers. In recent years, however, they have begun performing and recording their own compositions as well. 

DEPAUL ENSEMBLE 20+

DePaul's Ensemble 20+ presents living composers' music and 20th-century works. The ensemble collaborates with composers and performers of varying backgrounds, including DePaul University School of Music faculty and students, Chicago composers, and national and international artists. DePaul Ensemble 20+ seeks to engage with the ever-widening and changing contemporary compositional styles and musical practices. It fosters collaboration and mutual respect among performers, composers, and audience members; it contributes to a positive and creatively vital musical community.  Michael Lewanski, conductor.

The Musicians:

South Side Love Letter Performers:

Constance Volk, flute

Katie Jimoh, clarinet

Ben Melsky, harp

Kyle Flens, percussion

Caitlin Edwards, violin

Juan Horie, cello

Mark Buchner, bass

Michael Lewanski, conductor

Hunter Brown, technical director

Decolonizing Beauty Performers:

Nicole Mitchell, flute solo

Tomeka Reid, cello solo

Mike Reed, drums solo

Michael Lewanski, conductor

Violin I: Caitlin Edwards, Danira Rodriguez-Purcell, Jorge Amado Molina, Carlysta Tran

Violin II: Lena Vidulich, Jason Hurlbut, Jose Andres Robuschi, Joshua Sukhdeo

Viola: Ammie Brod, Mason Spencer, Facundo Ortega, Ben Silberman

Cello: Juan Horie, Julianna Bray, Hannah Stanley

Bass: Mark Bucher, Hannah Novak

Acknowledgements:

Fromm Music Foundation

John Bierbusse

DePaul University

Julia Fish

The staff of the Holtschneider Performance Center, DePaul University School of Music