Matt Mitchell’s Zealous Angles

Zealous Angles is Matt Mitchell’s 2024 album on Pi Recordings featuring bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Dan Weiss. Zealous Angles is also the name of Matt Mitchell’s quartet with Tordini, Weiss, and guitarist Miles Okazaki which plays the music from the album. These four musicians have decades of shared playing experience in myriad situations which they apply to Mitchell’s mind-bending polyrhythmic and polymetric compositions.

Matt Mitchell is a pianist and composer whose creative practice exists in a nexus between myriad 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. In addition to co-leading Snark Horse with Kate Gentile, he also fronts several ensembles featuring many of the foremost improvisers on the scene, including Kim Cass, Kate Gentile, Jon Irabagon, Miles Okazaki, Mariel Roberts, Sara Schoenbeck, Sara Serpa, Andrew Smiley, Brandon Seabrook, Ches Smith, Chris Tordini, Anna Webber, Dan Weiss, and Miguel Zenon.

He is a member of several significant and acclaimed creative music ensembles, including those led by Dan Weiss, Miles Okazaki, Ches Smith, Kate Gentile, Anna Webber, Jon Irabagon, Ralph Alessi, and Yuhan Su. He has a longstanding association with Tim Berne, and he plays and 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 received several awards and fellowships including the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, the Doris Duke Impact Award, and multiple Shifting Foundation grants.