PERFORMANCE: Nicole Mitchell + Joe Westerlund

Nicole Mitchell Joe Westerlund Portrait by Shannon Kelly

Photo by Shannon Kelly

PERFORMANCE: Nicole Mitchell + Joe Westerlund.
Thursday, December 3rd, 2026 at 7PM
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center {120 College Street}
TICKETS – $12 General Admission / $8 for BMCM+AC members + Students w/ID
TICKETS COMING SOON

Join us for an evening performance at BMCM+AC by internationally acclaimed flutist Nicole Mitchell + visionary percussionist Joe Westerlund.

Nicole Mitchell is an award-winning creative flutist, conceptualist and composer. Her first concern is creating projects where she combines her love for nature, liberation and music in an effort to contribute towards the deepening of human consciousness. Joe Westerlund is a North Carolina-based composer and percussionist whose work moves fluidly between song-based forms, experimental music, and improvisation, creating richly textured, rhythmically inventive pieces that bring together percussion, electronics, chamber instrumentation, and unexpected sonic relationships.
 
Together, they draw on their individual relationships to spontaneous composition, Mitchell having been the chair of Chicago’s legendary Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM), and Westerlund a long-time pupil of Milford Graves, to create music that is built less from preconception and more from attention.

“Written in the Universe isn’t about arriving anywhere. Instead, it invites listeners into the act of listening itself: two musicians responding to one another—and to the world around them—with such attentiveness that spontaneous composition becomes indistinguishable from intuition.” – Ayana Contreras, June 2026

Nicole Mitchell + Joe Westerlund’s new album releases November 6 on Psychic Hotline. Written in the Universe is a stunning document of spontaneous composition where jazz, electronics, and psychedelic textures converge in real time. Recorded live over two days with no overdubs, it captures an intuitive musical dialogue shaped by the forests of North Carolina and the boundless spirit of discovery. Showcasing the spontaneity of their improvisations, blending expressive flute, live electronics, and deeply rooted polyrhythms into expansive, immersive compositions that unfold in real time.

Pressed to 12” black vinyl, is set to be released physically in record stores on November 6, 2026 via Psychic Hotline, with digital street date following on November 20, 2026. You can pre-order the digital album on Bandcamp.