I don’t know whether Nicole Mitchell likes roller-coasters; I do know she’s spent plenty of time navigating emotional peaks and valleys over the last several weeks.
Mitchell, the much-lauded Chicago jazz flutist and composer, had the tools of her trade stolen while on tour in Milan in mid-September; trumpeter David Young, a member of Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble, also lost an instrument in the theft. The circumstances, as previously reported in the Chicago Tribune, represent any musician’s worst nightmare: an exhilarating concert, followed by a late-night repast with the concert organizers – and then the crushing discovery that during the celebration, your world was turning upside down.
Mitchell, who returned to Europe last week for more touring, lost a $4,000 piccolo and a one-year-old Muramatsu flute valued at $7,000, which she had only finished paying off this past January. Young lost a vintage (1963) Schilke trumpet, made by Renold O. Schilke (the renowned instrument company’s founder) himself. None of the instruments were insured; both Mitchell and Young were under the mistaken impression that their instruments would be covered by home insurance policies.
For Mitchell, the loss went beyond even her prized instruments. What has not been reported anywhere else is the fact that the bag containing her flutes also held handwritten arrangements for her band, which Mitchell will now need to re-create from recordings. Even worse, Mitchell the bag also held the memory sticks on which she had recorded several recent concerts, representing the only documentation of those events.
One of these was her lustrous duo performance with pianist Anthony Davis at Ganz Hall in early September, one of the true highlights of this year’s Chicago Jazz Festival. (Mitchell had been in discussion with Dave Douglas about issuing this recording on his Greenleaf Records label.)
The enormous inventory of the bag played a part in Mitchell’s decision to leave it in the car in the first place. “People always have this idea that ‘you play flute, it’s so easy to carry.’ But the bag had my flute, piccolo, music for the ensemble, my dress, my shoes . . . .” Even so, her first instinct was to take the bag into the restaurant. “But the driver stopped us and told us to put the bags in the car; he said he going to move the car, and it would be fine.”
David Young had a similar instinct, and even a sort of premonition, when he heard the driver’s instruction. “I never leave my instruments in the car,” he said, explaining that a confluence of conditions led him to drop his guard. “We hadn’t had dinner, and everyone was exhausted from the tour; and we had to make a flight in five hours.
“So we go to this late-night place, and as we’re getting out of the car, we all wanted to take our instruments. And when the driver said, ‘It’s OK, we’ve never had a problem,’ I think we all had this little moment – we talked about it later – thinking, ‘That doesn’t feel natural.’ I’m mostly disappointed in myself; I had this little voice in the back of my head wondering if this was a good idea.”
Mitchell recalled that while they were in the restaurant, “Someone came in and reported that a computer had been stolen out of his car – that same night! I said we should get our stuff out, but the driver had already moved the car, and we didn’t know where he was.”
Young has another trumpet to fall back on; Mitchell had no other flutes. When that news got out, she received a few offers to loan her an instrument for some imminent Chicago gigs. Then came the possibility of a benefit to be staged by friends and fans, which was actually in the planning stages – until she nixed the idea. At the time, Mitchell expressed to me her discomfort in the idea of a benefit:
“These are such really tough economic times – that’s probably why the flutes were stolen in the first place. People are doing fundraisers for people who’ve lost their homes, and those are the challenges people are facing. There’s so many people dealing with the basics, and while I think it’s really beautiful that people would want to raise money for me – and I’m in a really bad financial position myself right now – I just wouldn’t want to take away from people in need [of the basics]."
It's not quite the final scene of It's A Wonderful Life, but Mitchell's experience does have overtones of the holiday classic. "I’m just really inspired that people would want to do that for me – that people are there for you when you need them. That’s a real blessing. It makes me feel that I’m not alone.”
If she wanted more proof that the universe sometimes works in good ways, Mitchell got it in the outpouring of support, from fans as well as friends, that followed the report of the theft in the Tribune and her own posting of the news on Facebook. “I’m really moved by the community response,” she said last week; “some Italians even read the story and responded. That’s why I wanted to make it public; I thought that because of the online phenomenon, it might help get the flute back.”
It hasn’t thus far – but that doesn’t mean Mitchell remains flute-less. I’ll have the rest of the story, complete with a genuine guardian angel, tomorrow.
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