Nicole Mitchell is an award-winning American jazz flautist, composer, conceptualist, and bandleader born on February 17, 1967, in Syracuse, New York.[1] She initially trained classically on piano and viola before becoming classically trained in flute and playing in youth orchestras as a teenager. Though she initially intended to study computer science in college, she took an improvisation class at the University of California, San Diego, under Jimmy Cheatham, which redirected her toward jazz music.[1] Mitchell moved to Chicago in 1990 and emerged from the city's innovative music scene in the late 1990s.[2] She co-founded the all-female ensemble Samana with drummer Maia and bassist Shanta Nurullah, which was the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians' (AACM) first all-woman ensemble.[2] She subsequently worked with percussionist Hamid Drake and saxophonist David Boykin, eventually establishing the Black Earth Ensemble in 1998, which has become her primary compositional laboratory for over twenty years.[4] She has also founded Black Earth Strings, Sonic Projections, and Ice Crystal.[2] Mitchell is perhaps best known for her work as a creative flutist, having developed a unique improvisational language and been repeatedly awarded "Top Flutist of the Year" by Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll and the Jazz Journalists Association from 2010 to 2022.[2] Her research centers on the powerful legacy of contemporary African American culture and black experimental art, with particular interest in science fiction and Afrofuturism.[4] Among her major recognitions are the Doris Duke Artist Award (2012), the Herb Alpert Award (2011), the Champion of New Music Award from the American Composers Forum (2018), and the Women In Jazz Visionary Award (2019).[4] She served as the first woman president of the AACM and is currently an emeritus president.[5] Mitchell teaches jazz at the University of Virginia and continues to compose for contemporary ensembles of varied instrumentation while performing internationally throughout Europe, Canada, and the United States.