Opening the concert’s second half, Mitchell played a fully improvised piece for alto. “Good improvisation is one that creates spontaneous compositions,” he’d told the students. He began with two swooping descending phrases, built up with passages of that illusionist multi-horn leaping to some split-toned honks, came back to a quieter repetition of his opening phrases, built again to some high-register climaxes, broke into extended repetitive figures with circular breathing, and then a single mid-range note that occasionally split and moaned for a full minute. He worked his way back up to some bagpipe wailing, then finally came down to a long held tone in his tenor register.
“To me, what I’m trying to be, it takes a long time,” he had told the students. “But I don’t mind, because I love it. Exploration, that’s what I’m in it for. The problem as I get older is that I can’t stop time. I get up earlier and earlier every day, but time goes faster and faster.” Maybe. But for those 10 minutes of alto solo, time stopped.
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