Ars Nova Workshop presents the award-winning flutist, composer and bandleader Nicole Mitchell with her exploratory Black Earth Ensemble at Solar Myth on Friday, May 31.

Nicole Mitchell emerged from Chicago’s innovative music scene in the late 90s and went on to become the first woman president of the influential Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Her Black Earth Ensemble is a musical celebration of the African American cultural legacy that embraces the ancient past and paints visions of a positive future. The music is the weaving of swing, blues, avant-garde jazz, bebop, African rhythms, Eastern modes and Western classical sounds. The name “Black Earth” was chosen to honor the feminine source that our lives depend on—Mother Earth. The ensemble will perform Mitchell’s stunning Xenogenesis Suite, inspired by Afrofuturist author Octavia Butler, which Chicago Reader called, “brooding and sometimes harrowing.”