Roscoe Mitchell is an internationally renowned musician and composer. His virtuosic resurrection of overlooked woodwind instruments spanning extreme registers, visionary solo performances, and assertion of a hybrid compositional/improvisational paradigm have placed him at the forefront of contemporary music. Mitchell is a founding member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), and the Trio Space. He is also distinguished as the founder of the Creative Arts Collective, the Roscoe Mitchell Sextet & Quartet, the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble, the Sound Ensemble, the New Chamber Ensemble, and the Note Factory.
His instrumental expertise includes the gamut of the saxophone and recorder families, clarinets, flute, piccolo, and the transverse flute in addition to his elaborate invention, the Percussion Cage. His oeuvre boasts hundreds of albums. His vast discography includes “Sound” (1966, 5-star review in DownBeat Magazine), “People in Sorrow” (1969, with the AEOC), “Nonaah” (1977, DownBeat Magazine Record of the Year), “Bells for the South Side” (2017, featured as one of the NYTimes's best jazz albums of the year) and “Discussions” (distinguished on the NYTimes's list of 2017's best classical albums).
Mitchell’s honors include the 2020 NEA Jazz Master Fellowship, the United States Artist Award (2019), ASCAP Founders Award (2018), Multiple Reeds Player of the Year: Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards (2023 & 2018), Doris Duke Artist Award and Audience Development Fund (2014), a CMA Presenting Jazz grant (2010), Golden Ear Award, Deep Listening Institute (2009), the Shifting Foundation Grant, Meet the Composer, and the John Cage Award for Music-Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc. Most recently, He has completed several commissions including “CARDS In 3D Colors” for Violin & Piano (Kate Stenberg & Sarah Cahill commission) 2020; Mutable Music commissions: “Sustain and Run” for Orchestra and Solo Improvisors 2020, two pieces of a three-song cycle of Bob Kaufman poems: “To My Son Parker, Asleep in the Next Room” 2020 and “WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND?” 2020 For Baritone and Piano (the third piece will be based on the Kaufman poem “Scene in a Third Eye”); Creative Arts Collective commissions funded by New Music USA: “CARDS: The Detroit Deck” 2020, “CARDS: 11-11-2020” 2020 and “CARDS: The Maple just turned Red”2020; Commissions for the Metropolis Ensemble (combined ensembles of Immanuel Wilkins Quartet and The Ruckus Ensemble): “LADY MOON” 2021 for the Ruckus Ensemble on Baroque Instruments, “O’CAYZ CORRAL Part Two” 2020 for the Immanuel Wilkins Quartet on modern instruments, “Metropolis At 440 Oakwood Drive” 2020 for the combined Metropolis Ensemble. Additionally, he celebrated two 50-year anniversaries this decade: the AACM's in 2015 and the Art Ensemble of Chicago's in 2019.
Active as a visual artist since 1963, with a hiatus in the 1970s and '80s when he concentrated on musical composition, Mitchell was afforded time off-road during the pandemic, in which he began painting very avidly, resulting in a large body of intricately composed, jubilantly colorful, playful works. His recent canvases — including a series of compositionally complex four-by-four foot works — as well as the earliest of his paintings were featured in "The Keeper of the Code: Paintings 1963-2022," a retrospective exhibition mounted early in 2023 at Corbett vs. Dempsey gallery in Chicago. This was Mitchell's first solo show, and it was accompanied by a 140-page catalog.
Tim Russell lives at the confluence of the aural and the visual. He currently serves as Music Director for the University of Wisconsin’s Dance Department. In 2019, Tim was selected as one of the Cowles Visiting Artists at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, a first for a Musician in the field of Dance. He has a vast catalogue of works specifically for choreography, most of which exist live, in collaboration with movement. His 2020 album: “Junct”, a collection of improvisational duets with bassist Ari Smith, was included in Tone Madison’s top 20 records of 2020. His commitment to the nowness in performance led him to co-create/curate, along with choreographer Maria Gillespie, Hyperlocal MKE, a Music and Dance improvisation series that exists to this day in Milwaukee. His current curatorial project: Common Sage Arts, promotes multidisciplinary artists through carefully curated performances. Along with Tim’s long time collaboration with the Gerald Casel Dance Company, his audio shares the stage with a vast array of choreographic artists bringing Tim and his music across the world from Dock 11 in Berlin to YBCA in San Francisco. He holds an MFA in Music Improvisation from Mills College in Oakland, California, where he studied improvisation, electronic music and composition with the likes of Fred Frith, Roscoe Mitchell and Zeena Parkins. www.avoidancepolicy.
Co-sponsored with the Department of American Studies, Black Student Union and James D. & Cornelia W. Ireland.
This concert is free and open to the public.