The UMBC Jazz Ensemble under the direction of Matt Belzer performs with guest artist Nicole Mitchell for a fabulous evening of jazz. An award-winning creative flutist, conceptualist and composer, Mitchell emerged from Chicago’s creative music community in the 90s, and was the former first woman president of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). With an impressive 15 year run (2010–2024) as “Top Flutist of the Year” by both Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll and the Jazz Journalists Association, she is celebrated for her development of a unique improvisational language on the flute. 

The Department of Music presents the second UMBC Create Music Festival, an event that reimagines music education festivals for equity and 21st century music learning, with the collaboration of the BSO OrchKids program and several Maryland school large ensembles. Students will work with teaching artists, including Emmy-nominated composer and genre-bending violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain, Chicago-based vocal theater ensemble Artemisia Trio, multi-instrumentalist Russell Kirk, and UMBC music faculty and alumnus James Dorsey ’05.