DONOVAN MIXON (at session): Never heard it like that before. And you won’t hear it like that again!
For almost three years, Donovan Mixon has hosted jazz performances at a church auditorium in north Evanston. Different musicians make up each event in a series he calls Donovan’s Garage.
The musicians are always performing together for the first time.
[ambi: Donovan’s Garage session, February 2026]
The session in February was called “Electro-Acoustic Explorations.” Previous events have featured everything from hard bop to Brazilian and Afro-Latino jazz.
As you might have guessed, the first performances took place in Mixon’s own garage. During the pandemic, he turned the space into a recording studio. He started hosting jam sessions, playing his guitar and inviting neighbors to listen.
Step through the teal door with a sign reading “Donovan’s Studio,” and you’ll see posters of John Coltrane and Thelonius Monk.
[ambi: Mixon reciting scales and snapping at workshop, February 2026]
Mixon is also part of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and he’s a resident with the Jazz Institute of Chicago.
MIXON (at workshop): I would just go to school. And then come back home, it’s minor: C, E-flat, G, F, A-flat, C.
But on a recent winter weekend, you could find him at a workshop, dressed for the cold in a black sweater and fedora, drawing on his memories practicing scales as a teenager.
MIXON (at workshop): It was fun, and it gets it in you.
But academically, that’s really the easy part: just remembering your scales, remembering your relationships, all that. You can write that down. To make music is the hard part, when you go like…
[ambi: Mixon playing guitar at workshop, February 2026]
Mixon is in his early 70s, and he’s settled around Evanston for the last decade and a half. As a music professor before that, he’s moved from Boston to Italy to Turkey, where he met his first wife, Sule.
About two decades ago, she gave birth to their son, Ozan, in Istanbul. Shortly after, Sule was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and passed away.
MIXON: And music, yes, music saved me. I was reeling in a very deep misery of thought, and there were other things that had happened as well, but music did allow me to focus on something.
Mixon couldn’t compose music at the time, but he revisited that pain and longing in his latest album: “Finding Center.”
[music: “Finding Center” by Donovan Mixon]
MIXON: You have to work on strategies to hold yourself together, ‘cause you still have to function. You still have to go to the store. You still have to work. So it was a struggle of keeping my center, keeping myself together.
[music, continued]
MIXON: It can feel unstable at times…
[music, continued]
MIXON: And then, hopefully you would have some relief with some major tonalities. It goes back and forth, and that’s essentially what was happening for me.
While Donovan spent his college years listening to jazz albums with his roommate, his son moved back to Turkey and found a different interest.
MIXON: He’s a competitive chess player. And he’s starting university, so he’s distracted with other things, and I understand that.
His son has listened to his album. Mixon says he’ll appreciate it more with time.
MIXON: I try to communicate to him to have respect and to work hard and study and mostly to have respect for the world, and that will aid him in becoming a full-fledged adult man in the world.
Edward Simon Cruz, WNUR News.
