Coleman is a distinguished artist of the century who was named Performance Today's 2020 Classical Woman of the year and was listed as “one of the Top 35 Women Composers” in the Washington Post.
[6][1] She is an alumna of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's CMS Two Fellowship program, and a laureate of the Concert Artists Guild competition.
Valerie Coleman was born 3 September 1970 and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, in the same West End inner city neighborhood that boxer Muhammad Ali grew up in.
[9] By age fourteen she had written three full-length symphonies and won several local and state competitions,[6] as well as participating as a flutist in youth orchestra.
Coleman studied flute with Julius Baker, Alan Weiss, Judith Mendenhall, Doriot Dwyer, and Mark Sparks, and composition with Martin Amlin and Randall Woolf.
It came to my mind that role models are needed.The group grew to five people, with Coleman on flute, Toyin Spellman-Diaz on oboe, Monica Ellis on bassoon, Mariam Adam on clarinet, and Jeff Scott on french horn.
"[4] The ensemble was named resident-artists of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and has appeared in major concert halls throughout the United States.
It involved master classes with composers such as Mohammed Fairouz and Daniel Bernard Roumain,[12][13] and the panel of guest artists included Stefon Harris, Paula Robison, Carol Wincenc, and Stanley Drucker.
[6] She also appeared on NPR's Performance Today, All Things Considered, and The Ed Gordon Show; WNYC's Soundcheck, and MPR's Saint Paul Sunday.
[7] She has added a number of works to the flute repertory, also contributing to the literature for wind quintet, full orchestra, woodwinds, brass, and strings, many of which have been published by International Opus.
This work is a tone poem written for solo flute and was inspired by the various types of butterflies that live across South America.
However, the music starts to portray darker themes throughout the composition, which represent the corrupting and destructive influence humans have on the Amazon rainforest.
[15] She often interposes music with the words of historical figures and poets, in some cases using manipulated speeches of people of diverse as Robert F. Kennedy, A. Philip Randolph and Cesar Chavez.
[16] Her signature wind quintet piece Umoja (named for the Swahili word for "unity") in 2002 was listed as one of the "Top 101 Great American Works" by Chamber Music America.