photo by John Rogers

“A pianist of burrowing focus and an indispensable fixture of the contemporary vanguard” – Nate Chinen, The New York Times

Matt Mitchell is a pianist, composer, and electronic musician interested in the intersections of various strains of acoustic, electric, composed, and improvised new music. He has released several forward-thinking, critically acclaimed, and influential albums as a leader on Pi Recordings, Screwgun
Records, and Out of Your Head Records, and together with Kate Gentile he runs Obliquity Records. He leads the ensemble Phalanx Ambassadors and co-leads Snark Horse with Kate Gentile, These and other bands he regularly presents feature many of the current foremost musicians and improvisers, including Patricia Brennan, Kim Cass, Kate Gentile, Jon Irabagon, Ava Mendoza, Miles Okazaki, Mariel Roberts, Sara Serpa, Sara Schoenbeck, Brandon Seabrook, Ches Smith, Chris Tordini, Anna Webber, Dan Weiss, and Miguel Zenon. He is an member of several significant and acclaimed creative music ensembles, including Dan Weiss’s Starebaby, Miles Okazaki’s Trickster, Ches Smith’s We All Break, Kate Gentile’s Find Letter X, Anna Webber’s Simple Trio, Jon Irabagon’s Outright!, Sara Serpa’s Intimate
Strangers, and Yuhan Su’s Liberated Gesture. He has a longstanding association with Tim Berne, and he has played extensively in the ensembles of many major figures in improvised music, including Dave Douglas, Steve Coleman, David Binney, John Hollenbeck, Miguel Zenon, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Linda May Han Oh, Jonathan Finlayson, Mario Pavone, and Darius Jones.

He has taught extensively with the Brooklyn-based School for Improvisational Music, as well as at the New School, NYU, and the Siena Jazz Workshop. He is a 2015 receipient of a Doris Duke Impact Award and a 2012 recipient of a Pew Fellowship from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage.