Fame and fortune – what more could a jazz musician hope for?
At this point, Chicago flutist and composer Nicole Mitchell is no stranger to fame, having won several Jazz Journalist Association awards for “Flutist of the Year” and having scored feature articles in all of the major American jazz magazines (in addition to plenty of coverage in Europe as well).
But while Mitchell has found fame, that whole “fortune” thing has proved a bit more elusive – until now. In an announcement made in mid-May but only circulating this past weekend, Mitchell was named a winner of the 2011 Alpert Awards in the Arts, a $75,000 prize presented by the Herb Alpert Foundation and the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).
(Those of you with long memories might snicker at the idea that a major arts awards should come under the name of Herb Alpert – who hit it big in the early 60s with the catchy, then popular and now kitchy sounds of his band, the Tijuana Brass – but you shouldn’t. After co-founding the powerhouse label A&M Records and continuing to record pop successes, Alpert became a major philanthropist, a high-stakes funder of jazz education, and a painter and sculptor, whose works reveal a depth of emotion and complexity not usually associated with his music.)
The award honors past performance and future promise of artists working in the five major areas of study at CalArts (dance, film/video, music, theatre, and visual arts). Mitchell’s award is thus not a jazz award per se but rather a recognition of her place in the entire music spectrum; the extensive interview material and splashy graphics, which celebrate her win on the Alpert Awards site, focus equally on her place as an improviser and as a composer, primarily for her her Black Earth Ensemble.
The award presentation singled out Mitchell for “her brilliant playing, artistic maturity and the ways she courageously break forms,” adding that the jury was “moved by her dedication as a deeply ethical member of the musical community, and for the way she consistently opens up new spaces in the world."
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