Tectonics 2026 Artist Profile

Nicole Mitchell is an award-winning creative flutist, conceptualist and composer. A former president of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM), Mitchell’s work is centered in the powerful legacy of contemporary African American culture. She explores creative music as a catalyst for the expansion of human consciousness. Mitchell composes for contemporary ensembles of varied instrumentation and size while incorporating improvisation and a wide aesthetic expression.

Nicole Mitchell is a Guggenheim fellow and a recipient of several awards, including Doris Duke Artist Award, the United States Artists Award, the Herb Alpert Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. In 2025, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. With an impressive repeated run (2010-2025) as “Top Flutist of the Year” by both Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll and the Jazz Journalists Association, she is celebrated for sculpting an entirely new inimitable improvisational language on the flute.

As a soloist, bandleader and improviser, she has repeatedly performed throughout Europe, Canada and the U.S. since the early 2000’s. Mitchell has been commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, Chicago Symphony’s MusicNOW, the Fromm Music Foundation, the Newport Jazz Festival, the Art Institute of Chicago, the French American Jazz Exchange, Chamber Music America, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. She is a recipient of the Herb Alpert Award (2011), the Chicago 3Arts Award (2011) and the Doris Duke Artist Award (2012). Mitchell is a Professor of Music at the University of Virginia, where she is also affiliate faculty in American Studies and African American Studies.