2022 NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
Valerie Coleman launches new programs at Boston University Tanglewood Institute
(1/3/22): BUTI debuts a new Composition Fundamentals Workshop designed
by director Martin Amlin with Valerie Coleman and Missy Mazzoli as advisors. Additionally, Coleman will launch and direct a new Woodwind Quintet Workshop. Umoja featured in St. Louis Symphony's Martin Luther King Jr. Day concert(1/17/22): In honor of Martin Luther King Jr., the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra has announced a free concert to be held on January 17, 2022. The concert will feature “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by J. Rosamond Johnson, Umoja: Anthem of Unity by Valerie Coleman, “Justice” by Rollo Dilworth, and John Williams’ “Dry Your Tears, Afrika” from Amistad and will end with the final movement of Divides That Bind by St. Louis composer Adam Maness.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Angel Blue and The Philadelphia Orchestra to perform World Premiere of new Coleman work(1/24/22): Valerie Coleman creates This is Not a Small Voice, an inspiring new vocal work to a text by Philadelphia poet Sonia Sanchez. Angel Blue is set to headline this World Premiere concert with The Philadelphia Orchestra.
Valerie Coleman featured in NPR's WHYY following World Premiere of This is Not a Small Voice(2/4/22): A poem about the innocence of Black children, and the need to protect it, is the inspiration for a new piece of music, which got its premiere with the Philadelphia Orchestra this week.
Praise for World Premiere of Coleman's This is Not a Small Voice with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and The Philadelphia Orchestra(2/7/2022): The Philadelphia Inquirer calls Coleman's new work "an energetic statement of Black resilience".
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Top praise for Coleman's This is Not a Small Voice in the The New York Times(2/8/22): “There was grandeur, too, in Valerie Coleman’s ‘This Is Not a Small Voice,’ her new setting of a poetic paean to Black pride by Sonia Sanchez that weaves from rumination to bold declaration. The soprano Angel Blue was keen, her tone as rich yet light as whipped cream, in a difficult solo part, which demands crisp speak-singing articulation and delves into velvety depths before soaring upward to glistening high notes.”
Valerie Coleman announced as co-commissioned composer for New Music USA's Amplifying Voices(3/24/22): New Music USA’s Amplifying Voices program, which fosters collaboration toward racial and gender equity in new orchestral music, has over thirty orchestras from across the United States signed up to premiere new works co-commissioned from nine of today’s leading composers: Valerie Coleman, Juan Pablo Contreras, Vijay Iyer, Tania León, Jessie Montgomery, Brian Raphael Nabors, Nina Shekhar, Tyshawn Sorey, and Shelley Washington.
Lake Champlain Weekly features Valerie Coleman(8/17/22): "Finally, she resolved that she had no choice but to do something about it. She would form her own ensemble, she decided, a wind quintet — the same grouping of instruments for which Arnold Schoenberg wrote his first boundary-shattering 12-tone composition, defeating the rigidity of conventional classical ears. With this ensemble, she determined that she would become a groundbreaker, too."
As featured on Minnesota Public Radio..(9/8/22): Composer Valerie Coleman does a little bit of everything. She is a flute virtuoso, a famous composer, a model for Black musicians worldwide and a mentor to her students.
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