OPTION: FLUTTER (Fay Victor & Nicole Mitchell) with Devon Gates

Recorded in the ESS studio on July 7, 2024

OPTION presents FLUTTER, the duo project of Fay Victor and Nicole Mitchell for voices, flute and electronics, with bassist/vocalist Devon Gates joining for a portion of the set.

About Fay Victor
“She’s essentially invented her own hybrid of song and spoken word, a scat style for today’s avant-garde.” - The New York Times
Fay Victor is a sound artist/bandleader that uses performance, improvisation and composition to examine representations of modern life and blackness. Victor has released thirteen critically acclaimed albums as a leader, seeing praise in venerable media outlets such as Downbeat, JazzTimes, The New York Times, Time Out New York, The Wire, The San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Quietus and the Huffington Post. Victor has performed with luminaries such as Gary Bartz, Archie Schepp, Nicole Mitchell, Randy Weston, Roswell Rudd and Moor Mother and is a member of the esteemed new music ensemble, International  Contemporary Ensemble. In 2023, Victor released first solo record on the Northern Spy records, and most recently has released ‘Life Is Funny That Way’, a full on project dedicated to the unsung pianist, Herbie Nichols on the Tao Forms label that includes Victor’s own arrangements and lyric to Nichols’ iconic compositions.
Fay Victor is on the faculty of the College of Performing Arts at the New School and at ROC Nation School for Sports, Music and Entertainment at Long Island University in Brooklyn, NY where she teaches vocal and interdisciplinary performance tactics around improvisation. Moreover, Victor is the Board chair for the Jazz Leaders Fellowship, an initiative of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music to fund black women/non-binary jazz leaders. 

About Nicole Mitchell
Nicole Mitchell is an award-winning creative flutist, conceptualist, poet and composer. Having emerged from Chicago’s creative music community in the 90’s, she is the former first woman president of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Mitchell’s music, inspired by the mysteries of nature and the sci-fi writings of Octavia E. Butler, often bridges the familiar with the unknown in effort to offer alternative worlds through sound. As a creative flutist, she’s developed a unique improvisational language which has repeatedly awarded her “Top Flutist of the Year” by Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll and the Jazz Journalists Association. As a soloist and with her Black Earth Ensemble, she has performed throughout Europe, the U.S. and Canada. She is honored to have performed with jazz friends including Terri Lyne Carrington, Joshua Abrams, Brandee Younger, Vijay Iyer, Craig Taborn, Rob Mazurek, Roscoe Mitchell, Rufus Reid, Ballake Sissoko, Joelle Leandre, Fay Victor, Myra Melford, Mike Reed and Tomeka Reid. Mitchell composes for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, orchestra and big bands. Entities that have commissioned her music include: Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Music NOW, the French Ministry of Culture, the Fromm Music Foundation, Chamber Music America, International Contemporary Ensemble, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, the Newport Jazz Festival, the National Flute Association and the French American Jazz Exchange. Mitchell is the recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award, the United States Artist Award, the Herb Alpert Artist Award, and the American Academy Arts and Letters Award. She is a Professor of Music at the University of Virginia and enjoys teaching composition, improvisation, creative music ensemble and Black studies courses. Her first book, The Mandorla Letters was published in 2022 by Green Lantern and the University of Minnesota Press. She is honored to be a Powell performing artist since 2011.

About Devon Gates
Devon Gates is a bassist, vocalist, and composer from Atlanta, Georgia, now based in Brooklyn, NY. Through studying anthropology and jazz performance at Harvard University and Berklee College of Music, she has worked with Terri Lyne Carrington, Linda May Han Oh, Vijay Iyer, Danilo Perez, Claire Chase, Yosvanny Terry, and esperanza spalding, and has performed at venues such as Joe's Pub, the Monterey Jazz Festival, London Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, DC Jazz Festival, Winter JazzFest, the Kennedy Center, Roulette Intermedium, and SFJazz. Most recently, she completed a composer’s prize residency at Bowdoin College, and will begin her master’s degree at Berklee College of Music’s Global Jazz Institute in the fall. 

The OPTION series is curated by Ken Vandermark, Lily Finnegan, and Andrew Clinkman.