Product Details
- An MVD Exclusive
- SKU: FPE020
- Format: CD
- UPC: 857827004281
- Street Date: 08/10/18
- PreBook Date: 07/06/18
- Label: FPE Records »
- Genre: Jazz
- Run Time: 65:21 mins
- Number of Discs: 1
- Year of Production: 2018
- Box Lot: 25
- Territory: WORLD
- Language: English
Product Assets
Nicole Mitchell - Maroon Cloud
Composer Nicole Mitchell''''s paean to the gift of imagination and its ability to foster resistance in our dystopian times.
- List Price: $14.99
- Your Price: $14.99
- In Stock: 139
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maroon cloud, a powerful eight-part suite by celebrated flutist Nicole Mitchell, is a paean to the human gift of imagination and its ability to foster resistance in our dystopian times. It features a drum-less quartet with Mitchell, cellist Tomeka Reid, pianist Aruán Ortiz and vocalist Fay Victor, recorded live at National Sawdust in Brooklyn as part of John Zorn's Stone Commissioning Series (March 29, 2017). In part, maroon cloud refers to the realm of creativity that we can enter simply by closing our eyes -- an ability no one can take away from us. "Imagination, especially black imagination, is a really vital and undervalued resource," the composer states. "It's very clear that we can't continue in the same direction that we've gone, but we need to return to where imagination and creativity come from, because if we don't have another vision then we can't make a different future. What makes us special as human beings is our ability to imagine things that don't even exist yet." Those future-seeking visions, for now, exist in what we might call the "cloud." "Maroon," meanwhile, has a number of meanings: it ties into the theme of resistance by referencing the Maroons -- those Africans who escaped slavery in the Caribbean and banded with indigenous people to form their own communities as early as the 16th century. Mitchell also cites the alternate meaning of "marooned," i.e., people being abandoned to their fate. And then there's maroon, the rich dark color we might see with eyes closed, imagining social and political renewal. Nicole Mitchell, a longtime Chicagoan and professor of music at the University of California-Irvine, recently received a Champion of New Music Award from the American Composers Forum. She has been hailed for her "Afrofuturist vision" and credited as "the most inventive flutist in the past 30 years of jazz" by The New York Times. Her varied projects and leadership as the first woman to chair the AACM have widened the scope of improvised music.
Sales Points
- Follow up to last year's Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds
- Recorded at National Sawdust as part of John Zorn's Stone Commissioning Series
Press Quotes
A drumless chamber quartet featuring some of the most forceful voices in improvised music
—Peter Margasak, Bandcamp Daily 'Album Of the Day'
It's rare for an artist, in any medium, to achieve one of these transcendental creative passages. But when they do, it's crucial to check out everything they offer up.
—Dave Sumner, Bandcamp Daily 'The Best Jazz on Bandcamp'
an integral sonic conceptualization that communicates even as it illustrates limitless potential for the mind and heart to re-create the world.
—Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
Mitchell creates musical landscapes and environments. She creates sounds beyond the notes she plays.
—Will Layman, Pop Matters
Creating a suite of music around the ideas of imagination and resistance, the music develops a unique and evocative presence.
—Tim Niland, Music and More
New music and ideas almost seem to pour out of Nicole Mitchell, a flutist and composer of expansive vision and meticulous execution.
—Nate Chinen, WBGO
she proves that her breadth of artistic vision, as well as command of her instrument and ability to harness strong personalities without constraining them, can produce outstanding results.
—Kevin Le Gendre, Jazzwise Magazine