Roscoe Mitchell

About

Few figures in American jazz have shaped the avant garde as consistently as Roscoe Mitchell. A saxophonist of genuinely idiosyncratic technique, he cofounded both the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, two institutions that redrew the boundaries of creative music from the 1960s onward. His 1966 debut album Sound was a striking statement right out of the gate, the band reaching for toys and bicycle horns alongside conventional instruments to create something that stood apart from the free jazz coming out of New York at the time. The Art Ensemble of Chicago became one of the most celebrated jazz groups of the 1970s and 1980s, performing in elaborate costumes and face paint, and Mitchell kept the group going even after the painful loss of Lester Bowie in 1999. Away from the ensemble he has run the Creative Arts Collective, the Sound Ensemble, and the Note Factory, collaborating with composers like Pauline Oliveros along the way. Since 2007 he has held the Darius Milhaud Chair of Composition at Mills College, and he has made a deliberate point of mentoring younger players throughout his career.