“Digging deep into their own history is exactly the long run up Mitchener and her ensemble need to make their great musical leaps into the future.”
“It’s a marvel that such a small urban space as Cafe Oto, in the hard streets of Dalston, can contain all this music with its profound messages.”
“Whereas the originals pushed the envelope of their times and, on listening to recordings where available, still unnerve convincingly, the interpretations presented at Cafe Oto pushed today’s envelope in equally uncomfortable directions as, by implication, they reflected and acknowledged the issues in which society remains deeply mired.”
“This gig is a potent, provocative event that underlines the blues as a foundation for progressive black culture”
“The band captured the genre-bending energy of those times without imitation and added emotional force to the songs presented. (…) Mitchener was a syllable-stretching, sound-crunching force of nature throughout.”
“b r e a d t h b r e a t h had a genuine vitality”
“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.”
“SWEET TOOTH is a vital black British addition to those seminal creative statements of resistance and defiance from the African Diaspora.”
“Last night Elaine Mitchener made Hawksmoor’s old stones shake.”
