Nicole Mitchell: Maroon Cloud
FPE Records

It's always heartening when artists deserving of recognition receive their due, a prime example being Nicole Mitchell, the Chicago-based flutist, composer, music professor (at University of California, Irvine), and former first woman president of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians who's been creating music of originality and integrity for decades. Though she's certainly received acclaim and awards, her profile does seem to have risen during the last decade. Some credit for that must go to FPE Records, which issued her earlier releases Intergalactic Beings (2014) and Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds (2017) and now Maroon Cloud, a prototypically strong set recorded live at Brooklyn's National Sawdust in early 2017 as part of John Zorn's Stone Commissioning Series.

To her credit, Mitchell has never made concessions to commercial taste in her music and thankfully the same can be said of the latest release, an uncompromising eight-part suite featuring the leader on flute, cellist Tomeka Reid, pianist Aruán Ortiz, and vocalist Fay Victor. The absence of a standard rhythm section frees up the music by allowing the four to interact elastically and connect deeply with the customary foundation absent. Even a single listen reveals that rhythm remains in generous supply, despite the omission of a bassist and drummer.

If there's a theme to the recording, it has to do with the indomitable power and resilience of the imagination; as Mitchell sees it, “Imagination, especially black imagination, is a really vital and undervalued resource. It's very clear that we can't continue in the same direction that we've gone, but we need to return to the source of where imagination and creativity come from, because if we don't have another vision then we can't implement it, and we can't make a different future.” Such visions reside in the 'cloud,' as per the album title; 'maroon,' on the other hand, possesses multiple meanings: it aligns with the resistance theme by alluding to the Maroons, Africans who centuries ago escaped slavery in the Caribbean and established their own communities, and the word also invokes the standard meaning that has to do with people being abandoned to their fate.

Each of the four players leaves an indelible mark on the material. The full range of Victor's resources are called upon, the vocalist alternately singing, exulting, growling, and speaking Mitchell's texts (sometimes emoting wordlessly), and the leader's flute timbres add a delicate radiance to the quartet's dramatic and sometimes dark presentation. Reid plays with her customary resourcefulness, a musician who always enriches any setting she's presented with, and much the same could be said of Ortiz, the two primarily responsible for giving the music momentum and drive. As live recordings go, it also impresses, not only for the clarity with which the performance is presented but also for the absence of ambient noise; only three times does the audience's applause remind us we're listening to a live set.

Victor and Reid spread eerie unison lines across “Warm Dark Realness” in its opening minutes, Ortiz shadowing their movements and Mitchell extemporizing around them. Opening a set with such a shadowy soundworld's a bold gesture, but it's exactly the kind of thing we expect from Mitchell. While Victor's spoken-word turn at the opening of “Vodou Spacetime Kettle” proves captivating, so too does her blues-soaked delivery in the episode that follows. Whereas “Otherness” creeps, “No One Can Stop Us” swings mightily with an exuberant Mitchell and Reid setting the scene and Victor serving up repeated riffs on the title. There are out-there moments, too, the singer's seeming channeling of various animal species during one sequence and her wild, freewheeling contribution to “A Sound” cases in point. Mitchell generally comports herself as but one of four equals, though the bravura turn she takes during that same track speaks to her gifts as a soloist.

January 2019