Bklyn Sounds 6/27/2023 - 7/3/2023 + Nicole Mitchell & Christina Wheeler Are Iridescent

An interview with the improvising composers mixing creative music with electronics + Shows: Kahil El Zabar & David Murray / Caroline Davis' Alula Trio / Deon Jamar & Toribio / BusCrates / and more

Sometimes a musical collaboration comes along that, for whatever reason, feels at once highly  unexpected and yet deeply natural. Two artists long following their own paths in what seemed to be separate milieus, come together and fit together just right. That is the case with the composers and improvisers Nicole Mitchell and Christina Wheeler, who over the past five years have developed an occasional duo practice around spiritually attuned electronics that sound like organic extensions of the bountiful work they were already making. But also, often, unlike any other music being currently made.

Nicole Mitchell is a prolific flutist, bandleader and educator whose long-time association with Chicago and the Association For the Advancement of Creative Musicians (she was, for a period AACM’s president) has to a great degree defined her space in the culture. As has Mitchell’s lifelong admiration of science fiction writing (and especially the work of Octavia Butler), which has served as a core inspiration for everything from her creative naming mechanisms, to narrative direction, to the broad sonic embraces found in her music. Christina Wheeler too has always been embracing futurism in her work since I first met her through the New York City dance-music community of the late 1990s. She wasn’t a club kid though, but an experimental vocalist and electronic gear-head — at times, adding her distinct textures to bands led by figures like David Byrne and Riyuichi Sakamoto, and at other times, collaborating with great locals like Laraaji and Vernon Reid, or Greg Tate and Anti-Pop’s HPrizm. (Full disclosure: Christinal and I are longtime friends and creative confidants.) In the mid-’00s, Wheeler decamped for Berlin, where her circle has only expanded.     

Fascination with non-traditional expressions of what a musical future might hold, wasn’t the only thing that Mitchell and Wheeler shared before uniting. They are both strong, experienced Black female leaders in a craft that remains dominated by men — Wheeler has written about the issues of intersectionality in the music industry. And if there is little stereotypically “feminine” about the music they were making before they came together, there has always been a consideration of open-ness different to that of their colleagues, a separate gaze. From the first note I heard them play as a duo at Nublu in 2018, this consideration of musical space and texture, has seemed like a musical bond.      

Their long-distance project now has a name, Iridescent, and Tuesday’s show at Roulette is their biggest one in New York. It is an early performance of a composed — not simply improvised — work called “Conjuring Apparitions.” Mitchell and Wheeler have not done many interviews about Iridescent. So, considering the occasion, I took the opportunity to ask them a few questions by email, that would allow them to explain their musical relationship and the new work. 

(Scroll down past the Q&A for a Dada Strain readers discount code to attend the show.)

How did you meet? What were the elements about each other's work that attracted you to working together? How long have you been making music together?

Christina Wheeler (CW): In 2017, Nicole and I met through Ramon Norwood (aka Radius), a Chicago electronic music producer and DJ, at a concert that he organized at the Delmonte Speakeasy in Venice, CA, through the generous hospitality of Dublab’s Carlos Niño, the venue’s music director. (Also on the line-up were Ramon’s Present Elders duo partner, Brother El, Pink Siifu and John Herndon (Tortoise).) I knew of Nicole, but we had never met in person, and we got to play together for the first time that evening. The night was so much fun! Everyone took turns playing in different combinations together. I loved Nicole’s music from the moment I heard her, and we decided to stay in touch after that. Then, Nicole was invited to play at the Burlington Jazz Festival, and she reached out to see if I would like to join her for that concert, and that was our first performance together as Iridescent. We have been making music together when we can since then.

What I love about playing with Nicole is how massively musical and radiant she is as an artist. She really takes my breath away, creatively, and her sound on the flutes is so unique. Plus, when she was based in Chicago, she told me that she also played flute on a bunch of house tracks, which immediately endeared me, because I also do vocals for dance music producers, and dance music is a huge part of my life. Nicole is also incredibly inventive with her electronics, which is so inspiring for me when we play together.

Nicole Mitchell (NM): As Christina mentioned, our first meeting was at Radius' gig in Los Angeles. I was fascinated by Christina's work. At the time, I had just started venturing into electronics and was still a bit intimidated by it. She had a wide array of sounds coming from her system. I immediately thought it would be fun to collaborate. I had been inspired to start using electronics by Val Jeanty, Damon Locks and Ras G.

Shortly after that gig, we stayed in touch. She would come to LA to see family and I was living in Long Beach. I had an invitation to play at the Burlington Jazz Fest and thought this would be a cool start for us to venture into a duo together. We picked up another gig in NYC to perform the next day. I really loved the percussion sounds she put together for those sets.

You live an ocean away from each other. What is the process of your long-distance collaborations - do you write together, play together, plan together? If so, how? 

CW: Our project is improvised with multiple flutes, electro-acoustic and electronic instruments, hardware and virtual synthesizers, pre-organized beat loops, and electronics. I play an Array mbira, autoharp, QChord, virtual synths, Theremini, and hand-triggered samples, all processed through electronics. Nicole plays flutes, piccolo, synthesizers, and electronics. For our Roulette concert, we are premiering a new work called “Conjuring Apparitions.” We are both bringing in written text to include in the project. We also have an album that’s recorded that’s ready to finish mixing production for release. Because we are far apart, we don’t get to play together that often, so it’s a really special occasion when we do. We organize as best we can from long-distance, and I’m always so happy when we get to play together. We were both also involved in the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s 50th anniversary season, so we got to spend more time together then playing in AEC’s large ensemble.

NM: Although we are a long distance apart, we've seen each other in New York and Berlin, as we're both traveling around alot. Before this gig at Roulette, we have been mostly performing instant composition style -- creating in the moment when we come together. For “Conjuring Apparitions” at Roulette we have been meeting by phone and sharing ideas in preparation for the concert, and then will have rehearsal before the show.  It feels like it will take us to another level.

What are some of the ideas that your music generally explores, whether sonic or thematic? For lack of a better term, what is the music "about" — and what are its intentions?

NM: To me, our music sounds like consciousness -- it's cloudy with mystery. Sometimes a beat will emerge and dissolve, but there's also a playful, experimental aspect to it as well. You can hear our friendship. The intentions are to discover, inspire, conjure new ideas, dissipate fears, bring healing.

CW: We explore the realms of the acoustic, analogue, and digital, and what happens when these worlds merge together. I feel like our collaboration is continuing to blossom and evolve with time, especially as we had a big break during the COVID lockdown period. Our music is very rooted in Afro-Diasporal traditions, which can be heard in the beat loops that are played, and in the soulfulness of the music. I like to overlay multiple beat loops to create shifting polyrhythmic patterns that evolve over time, as I bring in and out other beat and percussion loops; I also process the beat loops through real-time, a slicing plug-in that has a randomization function, so that I can get unanticipated results from the beats, creating more tension and release in what’s experienced rhythmically. This Roulette concert is the first time that Iridescent will premiere a conceptualized piece. For this concert, we will include text that was written in specific response to the themes of Conjuring Apparitions.

On the Roulette site, 'Conjuring Apparitions' is described as "a project inspired by family histories around magic, clairvoyance, the supernatural, and their relationship to universal energy and electronics." Please talk about this notion of how electronics in music can evoke the spiritual and the "supernatural."

NM: Electricity is unpredictable and mysterious in it's way of being. When we capture and try to direct electricity through electronics, there's always things that happen that we can't predict. That's what makes it fascinating. The supernatural is by definition something we don't understand. As improvisers with electronics in duo we won't always be clear who is doing what, and magical entities of sound will happen in the merging of our intent as duo. 

CW: My family is originally from New Orleans, so magic has been an innate part of my childhood, rooted in daily language about gris-gris, with a seemingly comfortable, innate congruity between intense Catholicism, along with spell casting. When I shared this with Nicole, she also spoke with me about her family history with hearing voices and clairvoyance. We felt resonances between these family backgrounds, and decided to explore the connectivities between these familial histories. We also perceived a resonance between how electronic music is created with electricity, which also lives in the ether, and is often invisible to the eye, as the “power” that can evoke magic, and the energies that connect all beings and things through resonance. I have grappled with my family’s relationship to religion and magic, especially as I see myself as a very hard-core leftist, and these two aspects of my life have seemed at odd. What I’ve come back to is that people want to connect with elements in the earth and universe that are larger than the perceived finiteness of their physical bodies and selves, and that magic is way, through gesture and ritual, to move beyond the body and connect with larger elements through personal action. Music also comes to us as sound waves that we cannot see, and like “magic” can be perceived as an invisible, energetic act that seeks to affect change in the world through movements of energy. It’s the poetry of the connections between magic, hearing voices, clairvoyance, sound, and electricity that are compelling and inspiring for me. Humans have been moving their bodies through organized sound and ritual since time immemorial. We are part of the long lineage of family and cultural tradition transmutes these histories through the modern technologies of electronic musics. 

Anything else you want folks to know about your collaboration or about 'Conjuring Apparitions'?  

CW: This is going to be a really special concert, a premiere for a collaboration that we have had only a few opportunities to share with the world, so I really want to encourage all the local Brooklyn music-loving communities to come out for the concert. If you are not in Brooklyn, do please join us via the live-stream, and return to the concert’s video recording through the Roulette venue website’s archives. Deepest gratitude to Jim Staley and the Roulette staff for supporting Iridescent and making this concert possible. Iridescent also has an album recorded that we are in the process of getting the post-recording production and mixing sorted for release: stay tuned for that and upcoming concerts in the future!

(Iridescent: Conjuring Apparitions, Tues. 6/27, 8p @ Roulette Intermedium - $25adv/$30 - use the code “IRIDESCENT10” for $10 off)

THIS WEEK’s SHOWS: