Nicole Mitchell Top Best Jazz Concert of 2017

Flutist Nicole Mitchell led the world premiere of her collaboration with Malian musicans at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival in September. (Lou Foglia / Chicago Tribune)

The Chicago Tribune named Nicole Mitchell and Malian kora virtuoso Ballake Sissoko's September performance at the University of Chicago's Logan Center for the Arts one of the top jazz performances of the year for the "daring world premiere" of “Bamako*Chicago Sound System," calling it "intensely contrapuntal, lustrously sonorous music-making."