Registration

Finding Center: A Sonic Memoir, an immersive concert experience created by Chicago‑based guitarist, composer, and educator Donovan Mixon. This multi‑sectional performance weaves together contemporary jazz, improvisation, chamber textures, and global influences to form a deeply personal musical journey of resilience and renewal.

This is an AACM-supported presentation, bringing a Chicago creative music ensemble into a Highland Park gallery setting. The Art Center is an especially fitting space for the project because the music is rooted in memory, improvisation, composition, and dialogue — qualities that can resonate differently when presented in conversation with visual art.

Inspired by a life lived across Turkey, Europe, and the United States, Mixon’s latest project transforms trauma into beauty and connection. Finding Center is a meditation on chaos and calm, loss and love, despair and hope — a search for balance that feels both intimate and universal. “Music has been my anchor and my refuge,” Mixon shares. “It has helped me navigate the storm, find fleeting moments of peace, and hold onto the light even as darkness loomed.”

Joining Mixon are five acclaimed musicians whose artistry amplifies the emotional depth of the work: Robert Irving III on piano, Fred Jackson Jr. on saxophone and flute, Cory Biggerstaff on bass, and Charles “Rick” Heath IV on drums. Together, they create a sonic landscape that invites listeners to reflect, breathe, and rediscover their own center.

Finding Center: A Sonic Memoir will be performed at The Art Center Highland Park on August 27, 7-8:30 PM. Audiences can expect an evening of extraordinary musicianship and heartfelt storytelling – a celebration of music’s power to heal and connect.