Across the ranks of composers, conductors, singers and instrumentalists, classical music has been dominated by white men for nearly its entire history.
But with the rise of movements like Black Lives Matter and more focused attention on equity and inclusion in recent years, the field has made significant strides in gender and racial diversity, and that progress can be seen in the Colorado Music Festival’s 2026 line-up.
Njioma Grevious: Breaking New Ground
“There has been a lot of great growth in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion in this arena,” Grevious said. “I think there is always more we can do—absolutely. I hope we can keep pushing forward and being positive and spread the joy of music in these troubling times.”
In 2024, Grevious (pronounced like “previous”) received a $25,000 Avery Fisher Career Grant, a prestigious honor for promising musicians. Previous honorees who have gone on to substantial careers include clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, violinists Joshua Bell and Anne Akiko Meyers, and pianist Yuja Wang.
“I still feel somewhat speechless,” she said, “because it’s such a great honor to be part of a roster of musicians who are colleagues, friends, mentors and idols that I’ve looked up to for a long time. To be part of that list is extremely meaningful.”
The budding 26-year-old violinist bills herself as a “multi-platform artist” who performs as a soloist, chamber musician and member of the New York-based Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. “I find for myself that all these different disciplines mutually benefit each other,” she said.
For her first CMF appearance, she will be serving as soloist with guest conductor Leonard Slatkin and the Festival Orchestra in John Corigliano’s Chaconne for Violin and Orchestra from The Red Violin. The music for the 1998 film about the fictional history of a prized 1681 violin earned an Academy Award nomination for best original score.
“I have heard about the piece my whole life,” Grevious said. “I was born the year after the film came out, but this will be my first time playing the piece.”
Michelle Cann: Championing Underrepresented Voices
Michelle Cann’s career has received a huge boost from her advocacy of the resurgent music of Florence Price—who was nearly forgotten after she died in 1953, in large part because she was a woman and Black— and other lesser-known musical creators who have faced similar plights.
“I feel like I have become a champion of a lot of African-American composers’ work, especially ones that haven’t gotten as much attention as I feel like they deserve,” Cann said. “That definitely is a through line when you look at programming for me.”
Promoting such diversity is important, she said, because it wasn’t until she was out of school and beginning her professional career that she discovered Price and her peers. “I did not know any Black classical composers other than Scott Joplin, and it’s ridiculous that I wouldn’t know that.”
In the case of the work she will perform at CMF, it was written by an African-American but not one that has been overlooked. Valerie Coleman was named Performance Today’s 2020 Classical Woman of the Year, and she has earned many other accolades as well, including two GRAMMY® Award nominations.
“This particular concert is not an example of someone people don’t know about,” Cann said, “but if Valerie Coleman existed at the same time as Florence Price, I do not think she would be who she is right now. Not because of her talent, but because of the reality of the times.”
The pianist will be performing the world premiere of Coleman’s first piano concerto, which was written at her behest and co-commissioned by the Colorado Music Festival, National Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago.
Cann has long admired the composer’s rhythmic energy and vibrant orchestrations. Listeners can feel intimidated by some new music, but the pianist is confident that is not the case with Coleman. “You just feel brought into the performance,” she said. “You feel very engaged in the music that is happening in front you. It’s just exciting.”
Leigha Amick: Coming Home with a World Premiere
That the CMF would co-commission a work from Leigha Amick seems like a natural, considering that the up-and-coming Philadelphia composer grew up in Boulder and attended concerts there every summer with her music-loving parents.
“It’s a huge deal for me personally,” she said, “in that the CMF Orchestra is the one I saw the most as a kid, so to have that professional ensemble reach out for this opportunity is incredibly meaningful to me.”
Commissioned by CMF, Music in the Mountains, and the National Repertory Orchestra, the new work acknowledges both Colorado’s 150th anniversary and the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and what resulted is a five-minute composition that draws part of its inspiration from America, the Beautiful. The patriotic song is based on an 1895 poem that Katherine Lee Bates wrote after viewing the vastness of the Great Plains from Pikes Peak during a trip to Colorado. All three organizations will perform it this summer.
“The piece is called O Beautiful Unity,” Amick said. “‘O Beautiful’ from Katherine Lee Bates. And ‘Unity’ in that the arc of the piece is one of many lines throughout the orchestra working in different harmonic and rhythmic spaces and trying to reach a point of compromise and harmony.”
Two themes—a slower, more lyrical one inspired by what she called the “American orchestral sound” of 20th-century composers like Aaron Copland and the other drawn from America, the Beautiful—play off each other and resolve in a sense of unity. “It’s not a perfect unity,” Amick said. “I’m curious how others will hear it.”
Although women composers rarely got much attention as she was pursuing her early music studies, including lessons in counterpoint and orchestration with University of Colorado professors when she was in high school, she never really gave it much thought.
But when she attended Indiana University for her undergraduate studies, the entire composition faculty was male, and one of the professors met with some of the female students and asked if that had made them think twice about attending the school. And some of Amick’s fellow freshmen said yes.
“That moment clicked for me,” she said, “and made me realize that for a lot of my peers, this really does matter. If they know there is a woman in the field who is doing the thing they want to do and can be a mentor for them, that can have a big impact.”
Looking Ahead
Although the CMF’s summer line-up offers clear evidence of the improvements that the classical music world has made in terms of broadening representation of under-represented groups, Cann makes clear that more still needs to be done.
“Progress is always like that, right?” she said. “It’s not overnight, and it’s constantly going to take the next generation to care enough. And you see this younger generation really showing us who we should be, and it’s very encouraging, so I do feel good about the future of what our field looks like.”
