Talking Back: Performer-Audience Interaction in Roscoe Mitchell’s "Nonaah"

Talking Back: Performer-Audience Interaction in Roscoe Mitchell’s "Nonaah"

Many music scholars, particularly in jazz studies, have investigated performers’ real-time sonic interactions with one another. Very few, though, have asked how musicians interact with their audiences. The following article examines a performance that demands this kind of analysis: a 1976 concert in which saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell is confronted by an audibly hostile audience.