Roscoe Mitchell Quartet at The Historic Eldorado Ballroom

co-presented with Project Row Houses

Roscoe Mitchell's Nameless Sound residency culminates in a performance by his longstanding Quartet.

Throughout his career, saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell (b. 1940, Chicago) has been a leading voice in the fields of contemporary composition and improvised music. He is a founding member of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and of its flagship group, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, has composed for small combos, orchestras, and string ensembles, and has conveyed his lifetime of knowledge to a new generation of musicians as an educator at University of Wisconsin in Madison and at Mills College in Oakland. ...

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co-presented with Project Row Houses

Roscoe Mitchell's Nameless Sound residency culminates in a performance by his longstanding Quartet.

Throughout his career, saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell (b. 1940, Chicago) has been a leading voice in the fields of contemporary composition and improvised music. He is a founding member of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and of its flagship group, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, has composed for small combos, orchestras, and string ensembles, and has conveyed his lifetime of knowledge to a new generation of musicians as an educator at University of Wisconsin in Madison and at Mills College in Oakland.

Trumpeter Hugh Ragin (b. 1951, Houston) was raised in Houston, played in the all-city orchestra, and studied at U of H before establishing himself as the trumpeter of choice for Mitchell and David Murray. A true "musician's musician," he's admired for his imagination, clear tone, and harmonic daring.

Bassist Jaribu Shahid (b. 1955, Detroit) and drummer Tani Tabbal have also worked together as the sympatico rhythm section for Faruq Z. Bey in Detroit and for Sun Ra in Philadelphia.
 Shahid took the place of Malachai Favors in the Art Ensemble of Chicago with the great bassist's passing, and Tabbal has worked with James Carter, Cassandra Wilson, and Geri Allen, as well as with Evan Parker in his Transatlantic Art Ensemble.

This longstanding quartet, formed in the crucible of the Creative Music Studio music school in Woodstock, NY, was augmented by guitarist Spencer Barefield and recorded several albums in the 1980s and 1990s including 3x4Eye, Snurdy McGurdy and Her Dancing Shoes, and Live at the Knitting Factory as the Sound Ensemble. The All Music Guide's Brian Olewick writes that the Sound Ensemble is "the perfect foil for Mitchell's compositions, able to handle the most abstract ideas as well as the down and dirty, funky ones."

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