The Sunday Times – 23 December 2018
Classical review: London Contemporary Music Festival
Paul Driver
“b r e a d t h b r e a t h had a genuine vitality”
Review
The Guardian – 22 December 2018
The week in classical: LCMF review
Fiona Maddocks
“Elaine Mitchener’s b r e a d t h b r e a t h (2018, world premiere LCMF commission) had an improvisatory mystery, arriving and departing slowly and delicately.”
Jazzwise Magazine – 23 February 2018
Elaine Mitchener delivers dramas of defiance at St. George’s, London
Kevin Le Gendre
“SWEET TOOTH is a vital black British addition to those seminal creative statements of resistance and defiance from the African Diaspora.”
The Blue Moment – 23 February 2018
Elaine Mitchener’s SWEET TOOTH
Richard Williams
“Last night Elaine Mitchener made Hawksmoor’s old stones shake.”
London Jazz News – 14 January 2018
Alexander Hawkins – Elaine Mitchener Quartet – Uproot album launch at Kings Place
Dan Bergsagel
“Flipping between moments of clean organisation, swallowed sounds and run together fingers; UpRoot is composed as an epic struggle; a constant tension between clutter and clarity, wrought with emotion. Yet another unique feather in the cap of the diverse careers of Mitchener and Hawkins.”
Jazzwise Magazine – 16 January 2018
Alexander Hawkins/Elaine Mitchener Quartet captivate at Kings Place
Kevin Le Gendre
“Rhythmic turbulence, focussed harmonic distortion and dynamic interplay all bear down on Uproot but Hawkins and Mitchener also understand that the so-called avant-garde is nothing if not melodic and that beauty can occur when serenity dovetails ferocity.”
The Times – 12 December 2017
New Intimacy III at Ambika P3
Anna Picard
“The vocalist Elaine Mitchener, the poet Dante Micheaux, the saxophonist Jason Yarde, the trumpeter and flautist Byron Wallen, the pianist Robert Mitchell, the drummer Mark Sanders and the bassist Neil Charles delivered their set of Vocal Classics of the Black Avant-Garde with brilliance, discipline and daring; a body of work as substantial, poetic and exciting as Hans Werner Henze’s Voices.”
The Times – 14 November 2017
Concert Review – LSO St Luke’s
Rebecca Franks
“Bravest of all were the vocalist Elaine Mitchener and the double bassist Neil Charles (the Charles Mitchener duet), who launched into two exhilarating, mind-bogglingly freewheeling improvisations.”
The Wire – July 2017
Possessing Nothing: John Cage Song Books
Kings Place – London
Deborah Nash
“We are immersed in action and distraction from every direction – performers are behind us and in front. Dam chants an unintelligible mantra from the side; Mitchener bangs a typewriter; Brenda Mayo slaps pink goggles over her eyes and addresses us in French. At a certain point, the performers assume the majesty of archetypes: the messenger, the trickster, the home-maker, the wild card.”