Johannes Wallmann & Dennis Mitcheltree

media release: Arts + Literature Laboratory welcomes pianist Johannes Wallmann and Los Angeles-based tenor saxophonist Dennis Mitcheltree on Friday, July 14 at 7:30pm. Tickets are $15 ($10 student/ALL member) in advance online, or $20 at the door for everyone. Doors open 7:00pm. 

The musical partnership of Wallmann and Mitcheltree began 1997 in New York City, where Wallmann, fresh out of graduate school and starting his professional career in the “Jazz Capital of the World,” was invited by the already established saxophonist to join his quartet for a two-week tour of the Midwest. Twenty-six years later, Wallmann and Mitcheltree’s collaborations include six quartet tours of the U.S., two duo and quartet tours of Germany, countless additional performances in venues throughout North America, three albums led by Mitcheltree (including his 2022 release Golden Rule) and one led by Wallmann, as well as many joint educational and festival workshops in New York, California and throughout the Midwest.

Drawing on the near-telepathic chemistry Wallmann and Mitcheltree have honed over the span of 26 years, this performance precedes the recording of their first duo album, to be recorded at Madison’s Hamel Music Center.

Johannes Wallmann is a pianist, composer, and the Peterson Professor of Jazz Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Wallmann has recorded nine critically acclaimed albums as a leader, including Elegy for an Undiscovered Species (Shifting Paradigm Records), which was named a “Best of 2021” album by DownBeat magazine and described as “delightfully mind blowing throughout” by Midwest Record.

Mitcheltree was born and raised in Wisconsin, picking up the oboe and saxophone at age 12. He studied at Berklee College of Music, before moving to New York City in 1987 where he became a mainstay of the jazz scene, and relocating to Los Angeles in 2007. Mitcheltree recently released his 6th album as a leader, Golden Rule. The album “delights and amuses while keeping the mind fueled and geared up […] Mitcheltree’s tenor sax tone is warm, rounded and Sonny Rollins-like, but adorning a slightly trickier mind. We need music like this, as diverting philosophical salve in dire time,” writes Kevin Lynch in Milwaukee’s Shepherd Express.