Classically Black

Black classical musicians have been composing substantial music for centuries. This February, we shined the spotlight on a score… one every weekday… of great composers with roots in Africa.We met Le Mozart Noir… the man who not only was a world-famous swordsman, but an acknowledged master of the violin bow and the composing quill, playing duets with Queen Marie Antoinette. We visited a city of Creole musical dynasties, when New Orleans was home to the finest orchestras in the new world. We rediscovered a woman tirelessly composing in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, many of whose works were likewise rediscovered: in a dilapidated downstate summer house, leading to a worldwide wave of interest in her music. And we heard a sinfonietta by a 2oth century New York composer… who himself was named after an Afro-English composer whose interest in American music made him a 19th century fan favorite in the U.S.Looking for the music? TSPR Music Director Ken Zahnle shares all the compositions he featured on Ovation on a Spotify playlist.

Valerie Coleman

Tri States Public Radio | By Ken Zahnle

Published February 27, 2023 at 6:00 AM CST

It’s time to meet Performance Today's 2020 Classical Woman of the Year.

A child of the 1970’s, Valerie Coleman hails from the traditionally black West End neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky.

Beginning her music studies at 11, she had written three symphonies and won local and state competitions by the time she was 14.

Coleman double-majored in flute performance and composition at Boston University and mastered at New York’s New School.

In 1997 Coleman founded the Imani Winds (Imani is the Swahili word for faith), joining together five African American wind players. The ensemble champions composers underrepresented from the non-European side of contemporary music… influenced by Africa, Latin America, and native North America. Coleman said, “It came to my mind that role models are needed.”

The resident composer of Imani, Coleman has also added to the repertoire of her own instrument as well as works for other woodwinds, brass, strings, and full orchestra.

Coleman frequently employs the spoken word of historical figures, including Robert F. Kennedy and Cesar Chavez, as contrast within her musical works… and musically portrays the lives of heroes of popular culture, as in her wind quintet Josephine Baker: A Life of le Jazz Hot, and the clarinet quintet Shotgun Houses, which follows fellow Louisville West Ender Muhammed Ali from the ‘hood to the Rome Olympics.

Coleman has served on the faculty of The Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program, is on the advisory panel of the National Flute Association. and has been listed in the Washington Post’s Top 35 Women Composers.

Valerie Coleman… Classically Black.