ROSCOE MITCHELL
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NEA Jazz Master Roscoe Mitchell is an internationally renowned musician, and composer. He is a pillar of Avant Garde Music and Free Jazz. His virtuosic resurrection of overlooked woodwind instruments spanning extreme registers, visionary solo performances, and assertion of a hybrid compositional/improvisational paradigm have placed him at the forefront of contemporary music. Mr. Mitchell is a founding member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), and the Trio Space. He is also distinguished as the founder of the Creative Arts Collective, The Roscoe Mitchell Sextet & Quartet, The Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble, The Sound Ensemble, The New Chamber Ensemble, and the Note Factory. He is also Emeritus Darius Milhaud Distinguished Chair of Composition at Mills College (California) where he taught from 2007 to 2018.
In 2024 he was elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Department of Music. In 2025 received the inaugural Vanguard Award from Chamber Music America. Additionally in 2025, he was honored by the Jazz Foundation of America in the inaugural cohort of the Jazz Legacies Fellowship.
His instrumental expertise includes the gamut of the saxophone and recorder families, clarinets, flute, piccolo, and the transverse flute in addition to his elaborate invention, the Percussion Cage. His oeuvre boasts hundreds of albums. His vast discography includes “Sound” (1966, 5-star review in DownBeat Magazine), “People in Sorrow” (1969, with the AEOC), “Nonaah” (1977, DownBeat Magazine Record of the Year), “Bells for the South Side” (2017, featured as one of the NYTimes's best jazz albums of the year) and “Discussions” (distinguished on the NYTimes's list of 2017's best classical albums).
Mitchell’s honors include the 2020 NEA Jazz Master Fellowship, the United States Artist Award (2019), ASCAP Founders Award (2018), Multiple Reeds Player of the Year: Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards (2023 & 2018), Album Art of the Year: Jazz Journalists Association (2024), Doris Duke Artist Award and Audience Development Fund (2014), a CMA Presenting Jazz grant (2010), Golden Ear Award, Deep Listening Institute (2009),The Shifting Foundation Grant, Meet the Composer, and the John Cage Award for Music-Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc.
Mitchell’s works are frequently presented by orchestras and ensembles worldwide. Most recently, He has completed several commissions including “CARDS In 3D Colors” for Violin & Piano (Kate Stenberg & Sarah Cahill commission) 2020; Mutable Music commissions: “Sustain and Run” for Orchestra and Solo Improvisors 2020, two pieces of a three-song cycle of Bob Kaufman poems: “To My Son Parker, Asleep in the Next Room” 2020 and “WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND?” 2020 For Baritone and Piano (the third piece will be based on the Kaufman poem “Scene in a Third Eye”); Creative Arts Collective commissions funded by New Music USA: “CARDS: The Detroit Deck” 2020, “CARDS: 11-11-2020” 2020 and “CARDS: The Maple just turned Red”2020; Commissions for the Metropolis Ensemble (combined ensembles of Immanuel Wilkins Quartet and The Ruckus Ensemble): “LADY MOON” 2021 for the Ruckus Ensemble on Baroque Instruments, “O’CAYZ CORRAL Part Two” 2020 for the Immanuel Wilkins Quartet on modern instruments, “Metropolis At 440 Oakwood Drive” 2020 for the combined Metropolis Ensemble. Additionally, he celebrated two anniversaries this decade: the AACM's 60 years in 2025, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago's fifty years in 2019.
Active as a visual artist since 1963, with a hiatus in the 1970s and '80s when he concentrated on musical composition, Mitchell was afforded time off-road during the pandemic, in which he began painting very avidly, resulting in a large body of intricately composed, jubilantly colorful, playful works. His recent canvases—including a series of compositionally complex four-by-four foot works—as well as the earliest of his paintings were featured in The Keeper of the Code: Paintings 1963-2022, a retrospective exhibition mounted early in 2023 at Corbett vs. Dempsey gallery in Chicago, Illinois. This was Mitchell's first solo show, and it was accompanied by a 140-page catalog. Last year, Mitchell had his second solo exhibition from June 15 to July 27, 2024 at The Pit gallery in Los Angeles, California.
The Critics Speak:
"Roscoe Mitchell, Who Helped Invent New Chicago Jazz Sound, Comes Home." - Christian Belanger, Chicago Magazine
"Roscoe Mitchell, at the London contemporary music festival, was abstract, raw and funky in a stimulating evening dominated by the US saxophonist." - Philip Clark, The Guardian
"A Pioneering Black Composer Keeps Pushing... Blending jazz improvisation, post-John Cage modernism, funk and the occasional touch of rock, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and its co-founder, Roscoe Mitchell, made good on the ambition of its motto: “Great Black Music, Ancient to the Future.” - Seth Colter Walls, New York Times
Awards and Honors:
2024: Album Art Award: Jazz Journalists Association.
2023: Multiple Reeds Player of the Year: Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards
2020: NEA Jazz Master
2019: The United States Artist Award
2018: Multiple Reeds Player of the Year: Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards
2018: ASCAP Founders Award
2014: Doris Duke Award
2009: Jone Cage Award
In 2024 he was elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Department of Music. In 2025 received the inaugural Vanguard Award from Chamber Music America. Additionally in 2025, he was honored by the Jazz Foundation of America in the inaugural cohort of the Jazz Legacies Fellowship.
His instrumental expertise includes the gamut of the saxophone and recorder families, clarinets, flute, piccolo, and the transverse flute in addition to his elaborate invention, the Percussion Cage. His oeuvre boasts hundreds of albums. His vast discography includes “Sound” (1966, 5-star review in DownBeat Magazine), “People in Sorrow” (1969, with the AEOC), “Nonaah” (1977, DownBeat Magazine Record of the Year), “Bells for the South Side” (2017, featured as one of the NYTimes's best jazz albums of the year) and “Discussions” (distinguished on the NYTimes's list of 2017's best classical albums).
Mitchell’s honors include the 2020 NEA Jazz Master Fellowship, the United States Artist Award (2019), ASCAP Founders Award (2018), Multiple Reeds Player of the Year: Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards (2023 & 2018), Album Art of the Year: Jazz Journalists Association (2024), Doris Duke Artist Award and Audience Development Fund (2014), a CMA Presenting Jazz grant (2010), Golden Ear Award, Deep Listening Institute (2009),The Shifting Foundation Grant, Meet the Composer, and the John Cage Award for Music-Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc.
Mitchell’s works are frequently presented by orchestras and ensembles worldwide. Most recently, He has completed several commissions including “CARDS In 3D Colors” for Violin & Piano (Kate Stenberg & Sarah Cahill commission) 2020; Mutable Music commissions: “Sustain and Run” for Orchestra and Solo Improvisors 2020, two pieces of a three-song cycle of Bob Kaufman poems: “To My Son Parker, Asleep in the Next Room” 2020 and “WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND?” 2020 For Baritone and Piano (the third piece will be based on the Kaufman poem “Scene in a Third Eye”); Creative Arts Collective commissions funded by New Music USA: “CARDS: The Detroit Deck” 2020, “CARDS: 11-11-2020” 2020 and “CARDS: The Maple just turned Red”2020; Commissions for the Metropolis Ensemble (combined ensembles of Immanuel Wilkins Quartet and The Ruckus Ensemble): “LADY MOON” 2021 for the Ruckus Ensemble on Baroque Instruments, “O’CAYZ CORRAL Part Two” 2020 for the Immanuel Wilkins Quartet on modern instruments, “Metropolis At 440 Oakwood Drive” 2020 for the combined Metropolis Ensemble. Additionally, he celebrated two anniversaries this decade: the AACM's 60 years in 2025, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago's fifty years in 2019.
Active as a visual artist since 1963, with a hiatus in the 1970s and '80s when he concentrated on musical composition, Mitchell was afforded time off-road during the pandemic, in which he began painting very avidly, resulting in a large body of intricately composed, jubilantly colorful, playful works. His recent canvases—including a series of compositionally complex four-by-four foot works—as well as the earliest of his paintings were featured in The Keeper of the Code: Paintings 1963-2022, a retrospective exhibition mounted early in 2023 at Corbett vs. Dempsey gallery in Chicago, Illinois. This was Mitchell's first solo show, and it was accompanied by a 140-page catalog. Last year, Mitchell had his second solo exhibition from June 15 to July 27, 2024 at The Pit gallery in Los Angeles, California.
The Critics Speak:
"Roscoe Mitchell, Who Helped Invent New Chicago Jazz Sound, Comes Home." - Christian Belanger, Chicago Magazine
"Roscoe Mitchell, at the London contemporary music festival, was abstract, raw and funky in a stimulating evening dominated by the US saxophonist." - Philip Clark, The Guardian
"A Pioneering Black Composer Keeps Pushing... Blending jazz improvisation, post-John Cage modernism, funk and the occasional touch of rock, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and its co-founder, Roscoe Mitchell, made good on the ambition of its motto: “Great Black Music, Ancient to the Future.” - Seth Colter Walls, New York Times
Awards and Honors:
2024: Album Art Award: Jazz Journalists Association.
2023: Multiple Reeds Player of the Year: Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards
2020: NEA Jazz Master
2019: The United States Artist Award
2018: Multiple Reeds Player of the Year: Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards
2018: ASCAP Founders Award
2014: Doris Duke Award
2009: Jone Cage Award
For additional information contact: MM Music Agency
Phone: 212-229-9160, e-mail: maurice@mmmusicagency.com
