11 November 2012 update

Hello, everyone.

This will be the final update of 2012. Thanks to everyone for your constant encouragement and support.

I'd like to call your attention to my website, where I've put up some new music, including excerpts from two of my gigs from last month - my trio with Dan Weiss and Chris Tordini, and Normal Remarkable Persons, with Herb Robertson, Travis Laplante, Oscar Noriega, and Tyshawn Sorey. I also put up another live recording of my duo with Ches Smith.

I also have another couple whirlwind months of gigs to tell you about:

Nov 13 - Nov 15 I am on the road with the Dave Douglas Quintet plus Aoife O'Donovan as special guest. The band also will include Jon Irabagon, Linda Oh, and Clarence Penn. We will be playing music from the band's recent album Be Still, which has received universal acclaim so far.

Nov 13 - Blues Alley  - Washington DC
Nov 14 - Unitarian Society of Northampton - Northampton, MA
Nov 15 - Regatta Bar - Boston, MA

Then the very next day I head to Portland, ME to meet up with Rez Abbasi's Invocation for a couple gigs. The band on these gigs will also include Rudresh Mahanthappa, Johannes Weidenmuller, and Michael Sarin,

Nov 16 - Woodfords Church - Portland, ME
Nov 17 - Flynn Center for the Performing Arts - Burlington, VT

Then, to begin December, I hit more East Coast US spots, this time with the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble.

December 6 - ATLAS Performing Arts Center - Washington, DC
December 7 - Painted Bride Art Center - Philadelphia, PA [hometown gig!]
December 8 - Duke University - Durham, NC
December 10 - Roulette - Brooklyn, NY

Then I turn around and almost immediately head back out with Dave Douglas again, this time to the Green Mill in Chicago

December 14 and 15 - Green Mill - Chicago, IL

After that, back to NYC. On the 17th and 18th, I will be recording a new album with Ches Smith. We will be recording 15 of my etudes, and I'm very excited to be recording at Josh Roseman's beautiful studio in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn at 58 N 6th St. I will mention more about this in January.

Finally, to round out the year, I play on the 19th with Michael Attias's Spun Tree at the Cornelia St. Cafe, and then on the 20th with the Darius Jones Quartet at Greenwich House. Playing also with Spun Tree will be Ralph Alessi, Sean Conly, and Tom Rainey, and Darius's band will also include Trevor Dunn and Ches Smith. I was fortunate this year to play on records featuring both of these bands.

December 19 - Michael Attias's Spun Tree - Cornelia St Cafe - NYC, NY
December 20 - Darius Jones Quartet - Greenwich House - NYC, NY

and that's it! Thanks as always for reading.

Happy Holidays!

-m

October 2012 stuff

Hello everyone,

Matt Mitchell here again. I'm playing many gigs this month, all slightly different from each other, and I want to tell you all about them. Here they are:

As a leader:

Oct 2 10 pm at the Stone

Normal Remarkable Persons: Oscar Noriega, Herb Robertson, Travis Laplante, Tyshawn Sorey

This band does not play incredibly often so I highly recommend trying to make it! We play one song, and we play it long.

Oct 9 10:30 pm at Korzo

Matt Mitchell Trio: Chris Tordini, Dan Weiss

This will be our 2nd gig. The first one a couple months ago was a success - it got reviewed in the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/arts/music/matt-mitchell-with-trio-at-greenwich-house.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1348862961-0CxQUDs9elAfSuj+7jqYAw

as a sideman:

Oct 6 8 pm at Greenwich House

Michael Attias' Spun Tree: MA, Ralph Alessi, Sean Conly, Tom Rainey

This will be a CD release for this band - the disc will be available at the show. We had a great time recording it.

Oct 16 8:30 pm at Cornelia St Cafe

Amir Elsaffar Resonance Quintet: AE, Ole Mathiesen, Francois Moutin, Dan Weiss

Amir is a phenomenal trumpet player and I'm psyched to play his music with him for the first time.

Oct 18 8:30 pm at Cornelia St Cafe
Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth Deluxe: CL, Tony Malaby, Chris Cheek, Ches Smith

My first time playing in my friend Chris's band - we'll be touring the West Coast at the end of the month - the dates are below.

Oct 19 8 pm at University of Alabama
Donny McCaslin group: DM, Tim Lefebvre, Nate Wood

This will be my first time playing with Donny and I'm really looking forward to it!

Oct 27 7:15 Jazz Foundation of America's 21st Annual Jazz Loft Party

Darius Jones Book of Mae'bul Quartet with Conly, & Ches Smith @ 7pm

This is open to the public but is sort of a high-priced event. It goes to a good cause, though, that of providing services for jazz musicians in need.

http://jazzfoundation.org/loft2012

Oct 28-Nov 2 West Coast Tour

Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth Deluxe: CL, Tony Malaby, Andrew Bishop, Ches Smith

Oct 28 The Earshot Jazz Festival, Asian Art Museum Seattle, WA.

Oct 30 The Redwood Jazz Alliance, Fulkerson Recital Hall, HSU, Arcata, CA.

Nov 1 at Kuumbwa Jazz, Santa Cruz, CA.

I'm also pleased to tell you that the new Dave Douglas CD on which I play, Be Still, has just been released to a so-far-extremely-positive response. I'm very pleased to be a part of it, along with Jon Irabagon, Linda Oh, Rudy Royston, and Aoife O'Donovan. It is available at iTunes and Amazon, and also at Greenleaf Records, Dave's label - you can listen to a few of the tracks in their entirety there as well.

http://www.greenleafmusic.com/

Only one more update for the year after this one. I hope everyone is doing well.

best,

-m

July 2012 update

Hi there, I hope everyone is doing well. I have a lot of things to share so I'll try to be brief.

* Maybe the biggest piece of news is that I have been awarded one of the 2012 Pew Arts Fellowships. Twelve of these are given to Philadelphia-area artists every year. You can read about the specifics of the awards, as well as learn about my fellow 2012 Fellows, here:

http://www.pcah.us/fellowships/newsroom/pew-fellowships-in-the-arts-july-2012-press-release/

* Also, I will be debuting my new trio on August 9. I am excited to have Chris Tordini and Dan Weiss joining me on bass and drums. We will play some brand new music and some less new music which still hasn't been played that often. We will be playing at the Greenwich House in New York City:

http://www.greenwichhouse.org/announcements/sound-it-out-matt-mitchell-trio


* I'm no less excited to share that I'm now selling some of my music online. For couple years I've been chipping away at a composing project consisting of a large number of short piano etudes, a project which is now roughly halfway to completion. If you've seen me play in duo with Ches Smith in the past year then you've heard us play several of those pieces. I'm presenting them in groups of 9 pieces per volume or "books", and the first four books are available as .pdf downloads on the Screwgun Records website:


http://www.screwgunrecords.com/scoresmm.php?pageid=scoresmm


We will be recording many of these pieces later this year, btw.

* I have several other performances happening over the course of the next month:

July 7-14 I will be in Warsaw, Poland, with the School for Improvisational Music. I'll be teaching and performing with Ralph Alessi, Mark Helias, and Jim Black

July 16 I'm playing at Sycamore with Peter Hess and Jeff Davis

July 17 I'm playing at Cornelia St Cafe in NYC with Michael Attias' Renku + 2, along with Mat Maneri, John Hebert, and Satoshi Takeishi

http://corneliastreetcafe.com/list2010c.asp?sdate=7/10/2012&from_cal=0


July 21 I'm playing two sets at Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn. The first set is with Fourth Floor, my duo with Dan Weiss - we'll play music from our soon-to-be-mixed record. The second set Dan and I will be part of a septet led my Tim Berne, along with Oscar Noriega, Ches Smith, Ryan Ferreira, and Michael Formanek.

http://www.shapeshifterlab.com/

to round out the month's gigs: 3 performances with John Hollenbeck's Claudia Quintet +1. We will play at Shapeshifter Lab on July 27 and 28, the second set each night, with Theo Bleckmann joining us. Then we will play the Newport Jazz Festival on August 5, with Theo AND Kurt Elling joining us.


https://newportjazzfest.net/index.php?pID=31


* Finally, I played on several records this past spring, all of which I am excited about:

- I'm pleased to be the pianist in the new Dave Douglas Quintet. We recorded 2 albums worth of music over 2 days, and the first of these will be coming out before the end of the year. Other members of the group are Jon Irabagon, Linda Oh, and Rudy Royston, with vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Aoife O'Donovan joining us on several tunes.

- I'm also pleased to be part of Michael Attias' Spun Tree, along with Ralph Alessi, Sean Conly, and Tom Rainey. That album is almost ready to go as well.

- I finished recording in May with Quinsin Nachoff's Flux, with Dave Binney and Kenny Wolleson. I played a bunch of keyboards as well as piano on this, and it was some of the most challenging music I've ever played!

- Finally, I was one of many musicians to play on Dan Weiss' record in May. This was an experience unlike any other I've had in many ways, partially because the music is amazing and also because I played more organ and glockenspiel than piano on it.

That about does it. Thanks very much for reading this, and please let me know if you'd like me to remove you from this list. best wishes, -m

Hello friends and family.

I have some news to share. Today marks the worldwide release on ECM records of Tim Berne's Snakeoil, featuring Oscar Noriega - clarinet and bass clarinet, myself on piano, and Ches Smith playing drums, congas, timpani, gongs, and other percussion. In addition to playing piano I co-composed the tune "Yield" with Tim. This band is the exact same band that used to be called Los Totopos.

We are soon going to tour the US and Europe. You can find dates here:

http://www.screwgunrecords.com/page_b.php?pageid=concerts

Also at the Screwgun site, you can hear excerpts from the record, purchase the record, and also purchase scores of the tunes we play on the record:

http://www.screwgunrecords.com/records.php?pageid=records&record=snakeoil

http://www.screwgunrecords.com/scores.php?pageid=scores

The record has also been reviewed many times already. Here are several of the reviews:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/arts/music/a-new-album-from-paul-mccartney.html [below the McCartney review]


http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/feb/02/tim-berne-snakeoil-review


http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=41326

http://www1.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=41305


http://freejazz-stef.blogspot.com/2012/02/tim-berne-snake-oil-ecm-2012.html

http://londonjazz.blogspot.com/2012/02/cd-review-tim-berne-snakeoil.html


http://www.allmusic.com/album/snakeoil-r2352112/review


http://www.criticaljazz.com/2012/02/tim-berne-snakeoil-ecm-2012.html

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/theticket/2012/0203/1224311139141.html

http://www.seaoftranquility.org/reviews.php?op=showcontent&id=12252

Between the two Snakeoil tours, on March 7, I will be playing at Cornelia St Cafe. I'll be playing two sets - one at 8:30 with my duo with Ches Smith, and one at 10 with Fourth Floor, my duo with Dan Weiss. I've wanted to play double shows with these two duos for a while now so I'm excited to finally do the first one.

http://www.corneliastreetcafe.com/Performances.asp?sdate=3/7/2012&from_cal=0

That covers most of my activity for the next couple months. This past month I played several concerts with Quinsin Nachoff's new group Flux, which also includes Dave Binney and Kenny Wolleson. This group recorded this past weekend as well.

Another exciting thing is that Fourth Floor just recorded our first album a couple weeks ago. We played 3 tunes by each of us. We're really excited with how it turned out.

That should do it! Thanks for reading, and please let me know if you'd like to be removed from this list.

best wishes,

-m