Cameron Mizell

It’s easy to talk about where a musician comes from. In the case of guitarist Cameron Mizell, one need only pull out a map of the United States and locate St. Louis to answer that question. It’s far more difficult, however, to draw up the coordinates for where a musician has yet to travel. In the case of Mizell, to assert anything so two-dimensional would be like trying to flatten a diamond.

Now based in Brooklyn, Mizell has been part of the diverse New York City music scene for nearly two decades, performing in a wide variety of genres from experimental improvisation and solo jazz guitar to bluegrass musicals and salsa bands. His chameleonic musicianship, professionalism, and easygoing nature have made him an in-demand sideman and session guitarist. As a bandleader and solo artist, Mizell has released nine albums in the past 17 years, spanning the gamut from jazz-funk to Americana to avant-garde experimentalism, and has collaborated with or produced artists on dozens of more recordings. His latest solo effort, The Order of Things, is a cinematic trip through ambient and post-rock textures, melodies, and improvisations. Recorded in March and April of 2020, shortly after New York City’s COVID-19 lockdown procedures were put in place, the album grew from a need for balance and calm through slow, purposeful, meditative music that harks back to what New York Music Daily has rightly said of Mizell’s output in general: “Quietly and efficiently, Mizell has put together a remarkably tuneful, eclectic, understatedly cinematic body of work. In a world overpopulated by guys who play a million notes where one would do, Mizell’s economical, purposeful style stands out even more.”

Looking back on the many paths that came together to the elusive present, Mizell points to key way stations along the way. He cites early dance lessons as a turning point in that regard. Learning the fundamentals of counting time in dance impacted his development as a musician and attuned his developing ears to the vitality of sound. When it came to choosing an instrument to express that vitality, he found himself drawn to his mother’s old Yamaha classical guitar. “It was different than what everyone else was doing,” he recalls of what began a lifelong relationship, “and that made it feel a little special.”

While, at first, Mizell wasn’t inspired by anything other than availability, the guitar soon opened a gateway into listening journeys alongside musicians who would later shine as beacons of influence. Among those, he praises John Scofield for his phrasing, time feel, and deeply personal tone; Bill Frisell for his incorporation of Americana; Pat Metheny for his harmonic sense, the scope of his arrangements, and his depth of vision; and Grant Green for his groove and phrasing. Other teachers from a distance include Dexter Gordon, James Brown, David Gilmour/Pink Floyd, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Sam Cooke, and Marc Ribot.

By the time he was 11 and just starting to form his tastes in music, he was enjoying the heyday of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Nirvana, and Metallica—bands who “released albums full of guitar riffs and solos, all of which I tried to learn.” A few years later, he dove into Miles Davis and John Coltrane in an attempt to understand jazz music from the inside out. This was also a period of great (if brief) revival for swing music, immersing him in the interlocking puzzles of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Cab Calloway, and others. With a group of high school classmates, he put together a big band and began composing and arranging for horn sections, leading him to explore the guitar-led projects of John Pizzarelli, the Brian Setzer Orchestra, and the arrangements of Don Sebesky for Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, and George Benson. Later, while attending the University of North Texas to study jazz guitar, Mizell regularly got together with classmates for epic listening sessions filled with discoveries. UNT also hosted a series of masterclasses with singular musicians, during which the opportunity to spend time with guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel was the first of many to leave indelible marks on the growing Mizell.

The more independent he became as a musician, the more his palette expanded to welcome new genres into its color scheme. While learning to play bluegrass on the mandolin, for example, he welcomed Doc Watson, Tony Rice, Norman Blake, and Bryan Sutton into his pantheon of admired pickers. For the past decade, he has been playing popular Latin music with Dominican musicians and has learned to play salsa, son, bachata, merengue, and more in a variety of artists’ styles. Mizell has also done important work with dancers, especially ChristinaNoel Reaves and her company since 2010, thus bringing his creative practice, in a sense, full circle. “Interacting with dancers again was a well of inspiration,” he notes of that process, “and encouraged me to push myself into new sonic territories. This is where I began to develop some of the experimental sounds and techniques I’ve brought into my music.” One can hear those sounds beginning to take shape on 2017’s Memory/Imagination, of which Jazz Trail wrote, “Skillfully pairing controlled abstraction with Americana roots, Cameron Mizell probes new conceptions for his musical creativity, stepping on offbeat yet appetizing territories.”

In addition to his musical ventures, Mizell is an accomplished visual artist and creative director. As the current label manager for Destiny Records, following work as a music industry consultant with a range of labels, he understands the visual as well as the sonic impact of any musical artist’s statement. All the while, he has never forgotten the value of giving back as a teacher and humbly cites his students as a constant source of learning and inspiration. His paintings, too, can be seen gracing the cover of select Destiny Records releases—hints of a career that, at one time, came close to replacing music. “Art was a different animal,” he admits. “I was really interested in very detailed pieces that could take hundreds of hours to complete. I had a difficult time hanging on to the original intent of a piece from start to finish and felt like it made the art worse. Of course, this is something everybody grapples with and you figure it out, but at the time music felt more like my calling.”

Parallels between the two are alive and well in Mizell’s work, which thrives on fluidity and adaptability: “I follow a mantra of ‘process over product’ and trust that doing the work with intention results in the most honest music and art. Sometimes, I have no idea what I’m going to do when I put my finger on a guitar string to play a note, or pen to paper to draw a line, but if I stay present and make intentional choices one note or one line at a time, the result will be meaningful.”

On that note, Mizell has cultivated a sense of self-awareness and now prefers to stay out of his own way when working on a record, to “just allow the music to happen.” Such honesty gives wings to his creative spirit, whether he is contributing as a sideman, diving into a solo excursion, or rendering an album cover—because, ultimately, we are all citizens of Earth, and our actions have an undeniable ripple effect. Perhaps the title of The Order of Things is no coincidence, as order is precisely what we need more of than ever. Thankfully, one can always find it thrumming between Mizell’s six strings. Show less