by Kyle Macmillan
The Colorado Music Festival Orchestra was supposed to perform the regional debut of Valerie Coleman’s Piano Concerto No. 1 on Agosto 6 and 7. But when an earlier set of performances of the new work got postponed, it now finds itself stepping up and presenting the world premiere – a big honor for any ensemble and a treat for audiences.
The work was originally going to be unveiled junio 5 and 6 by the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC, but the whole project took longer to come together than expected. “We all needed more time, me especially,” said the composer who plans to travel to Boulder for the premiere.
A New Chapter for an Acclaimed Composer
Unlike many of her other works that carry more evocative titles, the composer decided to take the most direct route in naming this one. “It felt like it was time to unapologetically, without preamble, just say this is Piano Concerto No. 1,” she said. “It just seemed like the most powerful title given the context of my repertoire over the seasons.”
For many years, Coleman was best known as the flutist of the Imani Winds, which she founded in 1997. The wind quintet made an international name for itself with its diverse make-up, programming and GRAMMY® Award-winning artistry.
But the flutist became increasingly in demand as a composer, and she stepped down from the quintet in 2018 to focus on that side of her musical artistry. Coleman has gone on to be named Performance Today’s 2020 Classical Woman of the Year and has earned many other accolades as well, including two GRAMMY Award nominations for her works.
The Enduring Legacy of Umoja
No work by Coleman has defined her composing career more than Umoja (the Swahili word for “unity”), which began as a “little, simple melody” for women’s voices that she wrote for a pan-African group when she was in graduate school at New York’s Mannes College of Music.
A month later, when the Imani Winds was preparing for its first engagement—a wedding—the bride and groom requested a work that represented the African diaspora, and she arranged Umoja for that combination of instruments. The work went on to be one of the group’s standard encores. “It was very integral to Imani Winds’ growth,” she said.
Coleman later wrote other arrangements of the piece, and when Philadelphia Orchestra leaders approached her around 2008 with some ideas about a possible commission, she turned those down. Instead, she suggested—you guessed it—the possibility of an orchestral version of Umoja. She did not get an immediate yes.
“I thought I had lost the gig,” she said, “but it took them time to mull over it over and come back to me,” she said. She ultimately created in 2019 a 10-minute orchestral take on what had originally lasted only 90 seconds, giving it the subtitle, Anthem of Unity. “Of course,” she said, “the orchestra with all the different [instrument] families was a new playground. I was a kid in the candy shop in the best way.”
A Trusted Partnership with Philadelphia
In Mayo 2024, the Philadelphia Orchestra debuted its fifth commission from her, Concerto for Orchestra (Renaissance), which she saw as a way to highlight the musicians in the ensemble that she has gotten to know well. “I’m really grateful. They’re kind of my unofficial family,” Coleman said.
Writing for Michelle Cann
The composer wrote her first piano concerto at the behest of Michelle Cann, an acclaimed keyboardist who will serve as soloist for the Agosto 6 and 7 performances at Chautauqua Auditorium. The two are both on the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music and have performed together.
Cann has long admired the composer’s rhythmic energy and vibrant orchestrations. “You just feel brought into the performance,” the pianist said. “You feel very engaged in the music that is happening in front you. It’s just exciting.”
And Coleman is in turn a big fan of Cann, who she called a “natural, authentic virtuoso” who plays boldly and radiantly. “In writing this concerto, her spirit was with me the entire time,” she said.
History, Memory, and Musical Tribute
But if Cann’s virtuosity was a key driving force for this work, which was co-commissioned by the Colorado Music Festival, other significant elements entered into it as well. The second movement, “Requiem for the Brave,” which pays tribute to Civil Rights leaders and activists who died for the cause, incorporates a melody that Coleman wrote as a teenager but could never suitably place in a composition subsequently. “As I was writing the piano concerto, I was like, ‘What about this melody now? Is it time?’” she said.
In the third movement, she incorporates a juba, a kind of West African dance that Florence Price often used in her compositions. Coleman, like Cann, is a big admirer of the once-overlooked Black 20th-century composer who was rediscovered in recent decades and has now shot to fame.
A Concerto for This Moment
Coleman did not set out to create a work related to the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence but she wrote the concerto as the milestone approached (starting in earnest in Octubre 2025 and completing it in Mayo), and the piece went in that direction. But it is less a celebration and more what she calls in her program note a “nod and somber wink.”
“Everything that’s happened this year and last year is baked into the piece,” she said, “the anxiety we feel as a nation, the divisiveness and the moments of coming together that have been super-inspiring and powerful. They have been few, but the impact that they’ve left with us give us strength to winter the next thing that happens that disgruntles us.”