Black Unstoppable

Updated on Dec 16, 2024

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Released 2007 Length 71:09 Label Delmark Records		Recorded May 28 & 30, 2007 Release date 2007 Genre Jazz
Studio Riverside Studios, Chicago Producer Nicole Mitchell, Steve Wagner Indigo Trio Live in Montreal(2007) Black Unstoppable(2007) Artist Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble Jazz albums Hope - Future and Destiny, Intergalactic Beings, The Golden Age of Ap, Loved Ones, Ballads by Cobb

Black Unstoppable is an album by American jazz flautist Nicole Mitchell, which was recorded in 2007 and released on Delmark. It was the fourth album by her Black Earth Ensemble and the first for Delmark after three recordings on Dreamtime, the label she establishes with David Boykin. According to Mitchell, this project features a diverse collection of songs that touch all sides of Great Black Music: avant-garde jazz, blues, R&B and soul. The group ranges in size from a quartet to a nonet.

Reception

In his review for AllMusic, Michael G. Nastos states "Black Unstoppable documents Mitchell's complete concept, diverse thoughts, and ever potent musical gifts without resorting to existential theories - a woman's touch definitely gracing the powerful AACM aesthetic in a very positive light."

The Penguin Guide to Jazz notes that "The music is utterly fresh and contemporary, but it has unmistakably nostalgic connotations. Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble is a throwback to the early days of AACM, except there were next to no female leaders making records 40 years ago."

In a review for JazzTimes David Whiteis says "Few flutists can summon the variety of tones, textures, emotional realms and degrees of light from the instrument that Mitchell can: alternately eider-down tender, knifelike, declamatory and spiritually seeking, her sound — and the fearless way in which she prods her melodic ideas into new, unexpected directions — sometimes seems to invoke virtually the entire range of human possibilities over the course of a solo."