Prospect Magazine – 14 July 2023
When classical, rock and jazz music all pondered the meaning of England
Philip Clark
“Mitchener inhabited King George’s fracturing identities with an unsettling intensity.”
Review
VAN Magazine – 1 June 2023
A Chained Man’s Bruise
Madness and empire in “Eight Songs for a Mad King”
Benjamin Poore
“With one degree of separation, ‘Eight Songs’ records the sound of the injured and dying from a war between colonial powers. Mitchener’s version shows another vector of that violence: the foundational barbarity wreaked by empire on a different set of bodies.”
The Wire – May 2022
Womens Work, Wigmore Hall
Jo Hutton
“The ensemble exit the stage to Alison Knowles’s Shuffle, concluding a powerful evening of profound reflection on women’s influence in the world.”
Art Review – 30 July 2021
British Art Show 9: ‘A Scene At Once Thriving and Struggling To Survive’
Tom Jeffreys
“My thoughts for Art Review on British Art Show 9 – currently at Aberdeen Art Gallery then touring to Wolverhampton, Manchester & Plymouth. Highlights: Kathrin Böhm, Elaine Mitchener, Abigail Reynolds & Hrair Sarkissian.”
The Gaudie – 11 July 2021
Gaudie Exclusive: BAS9 reviewed
Rory Buccheri
“Equally powerful and evocative is Elaine Mitchener‘s sound installation [NAMES II] (2019-2021), memorialising some of the 2,000 enslaved African people owned by an Aberdeenshire sugar planter in Jamaica.”
The Press and Journal – 9 July 2021
British Art Show offers an immersive voyage of discovery
Scott Begbie
“Elaine Mitchener’s poignant (NAMES II) is a roll-call of the 2,000 enslaved African people owned by an 18th century Jamaican sugar planter, whose family came from Aberdeenshire.”
The Wire – May 2021
Elaine Mitchener & Guests at Wigmore Hall
Andy Hamilton
“This is an imaginatively conceived recital.”
TDE Promotions – 15 April 2021
Two Live Streams from Wigmore Hall: Trish Clowes and Elaine Mitchener
Tony Dudley-Evans
“This was an outstanding start to the Associate Artists programme with Trish and Elaine, and encouraging evidence of an openness on the part of the Wigmore Hall, and also of the broader issue of the genre fluidity of so much contemporary music.”
The Wire – March 2021
Black Top Presents: Hamid Drake/Elaine Mitchener/William Parker/Orphy Robinson/ Pat Thomas
Some Good News
Otoroku 2xCD/DL
“The work of this unique group shows how free improv can incorporate various genre musics, merging them into a miraculously coherent yet spontaneous whole.”