Nicole Mitchell is an award-winning flutist, composer, bandleader, and educator. She has been an integral part of the avant-jazz and experimental music scenes since the early '90s. She is also a former president of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). On her first three albums with her Black Earth Ensemble (Vision Quest, 2001; Afrika Rising, 2002; Hope, Future and Destiny, 2004), she garnered attention from avant-jazz aficionados and the mainstream jazz press. With 2007's Black Unstoppable, she began an ongoing if occasional relationship with Chicago's Delmark label. These early dates established Mitchell as one of the more original flutists and conceptualists in jazz and improvised music. With 2007's Xenogenesis Suite, she revealed her personal musical language on the first of several works of Afrofuturism. Subsequent titles include 2010's Intergalactic Beings, 2016's Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds, and 2020's Earthseed (with Lisa E. Harris).