Press

Vocal Classics of the Black Avant-Garde, Café Oto, London — a taste of the age of experimentalism

The band captured the genre-bending energy of the 1960s and 70s

Mike Hobart

“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.”

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.”

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.”

Breaking the chains: Elaine Mitchener on the British Empire’s legacy of cruelty

Chris Bohn

A Q&A with Elaine Mitchener about her performance piece Sweet Tooth – a visceral, overwhelming indictment of the role sugar and the slave trade played in building the British Empire.

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.”

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.”