March 21 - 22, 2025
From Ballroom Maria:
“Ballroom Marfa presents Utopian Futures, featuring world renowned flutist, conceptualist, composer Nicole Mitchell in solo and group interplay with a special configuration of Rob Mazurek’s critically acclaimed Exploding Star Orchestra, premiering live on March 21 and 22, 2025, at The Capri.
Nicole Mitchell, renowned for her innovative and visionary approach to music, invites audiences to explore themes of utopia and imaginative futures through her artistry. Originally inspired by a joint commission from the Chicago Cultural Center and Jazz Institute of Chicago, Rob Mazurek founded the Exploding Star Orchestra in 2005 to investigate the city’s avant-garde musical traditions. He brought together a group representing the diversity of the city’s contemporary creative music scene including musicians from Chicago’s North, West, and South-sides, from the burgeoning post rock scene to the highly influential AACM and Northside Improvisation Scene, for a performance at Millennium Park’s Frank Gehry-designed concert hall in Chicago.
The Orchestra has since included musicians from around the world and has premiered 12 extended suites since its inception. The latest release “Live at the Adler Planetarium” on International Anthem Recording Co., was released September of 2024. The group has featured a multitude of leading figures in creative music, including Bill Dixon, Roscoe Mitchell, Fred Anderson, Nicole Mitchell, Craig Taborn, Tomeka Reid, Jeff Parker, Damon Locks, Angelica Sanchez, Chad Taylor, Gerald Cleaver, Mikel Patrick Avery and many more. 2025 is the 20th anniversary of this shape shifting visionary ensemble.
Nicole M. Mitchell (b.1967) is an award-winning creative flutist, composer, bandleader and educator. She is perhaps best known for her work as a flutist, having developed a unique improvisational language and having been repeatedly awarded “Top Flutist of the Year” by Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll and the Jazz Journalists Association (2010-2022). Mitchell initially emerged from Chicago’s innovative music scene in the late 90s. She started with Maia and Shanta Nurullah in Samana (the AACM’s first all-woman ensemble) and as a member of the David Boykin EXPANSE. Her music celebrates contemporary African American culture. She is the founder of Black Earth Ensemble, Black Earth Strings, Sonic Projections and Ice Crystal, and she composes for contemporary ensembles of varied instrumentation and size, while incorporating improvisation and a wide aesthetic expression. The former first woman president of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Mitchell celebrates endless possibilities by “creating visionary worlds through music that bridge the familiar with the unknown.” Some of her newest work with Black Earth Ensemble explores intercultural collaborations; Bamako*Chicago, featuring Malian kora master, Ballake Sissoko and Mandorla Awakening with Kojiro Umezaki (shakuhachi) and Tatsu Aoki (taiko, bass, shamisen). As a composer, Mitchell has been commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago, the Stone, the French American Jazz Exchange, Chamber Music America (New Works), the Chicago Jazz Festival, ICE, and the Chicago Sinfonietta. Mitchell has performed with creative music luminaries including Craig Taborn, Roscoe Mitchell, Joelle Leandre, Anthony Braxton, Geri Allen, George Lewis, Mark Dresser, Steve Coleman, Anthony Davis, Myra Melford, Bill Dixon, Muhal Richard Abrams, Ed Wilkerson, Rob Mazurek, and Billy Childs, and Hamid Drake. She is a recipient of the Herb Alpert Award (2011), the Chicago 3Arts Award (2011) , the Doris Duke Artist Award (2012) and the United States Artist Award (2020). Mitchell is a Professor of Music at the University of Virginia, and previously taught at University of California Irvine and the University of Pittsburgh.
Rob Mazurek (born 1965, Jersey City, New Jersey) is an interdisciplinary artist/abstractivist, with a focus on electro-acoustic composition, improvisation, performance, painting, sculpture, video, and installation, who spent much of his creative life in Chicago, and then Brazil. He currently lives and works in Marfa, Texas. In 1994, Mazurek formed the Chicago Underground Collective, an ensemble that ranges in size from duo to orchestra, with guitarist Jeff Parker and Chad Taylor and a cast of revolving players. The São Paulo Underground was formed in 2004 with Mauricio Takara and Guilherme Granado. A joint venture between the Chicago and São Paulo Underground culminated in the collaborative effort Pharoah and the Underground which featured the great Pharoah Sanders.”
108 E San Antonio Street
Marfa, 79843 TX
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