This week is a banner week for composer Valerie Coleman!
The Kennedy Center has announced the world premiere of Valerie Coleman‘s piano concerto, co-commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra, for concerts on June 5th and 6th, 2025. Pianist Michelle Cann will perform the world premiere. Coleman’s new concerto will appear on a program of music celebrating the United States alongside Antonín Dvořák’s American Suite, George Gershwin’s Catfish Row – Symphonic Suite from Porgy and Bess, and two other new works by Charles Lamar II and Catherine Elizabeth, to be announced in the coming weeks. The two new works will be first performances by the National Symphony.
Valerie Coleman, composer
Valerie Coleman, a composer, a GRAMMY®-nominated flutist, educator, and entrepreneur, was named by The Washington Post as one of its “Top 35 Women Composers,” and she was Performance Today’s 2020 Classical Woman of the Year for her significant contributions to classical music. The award considers contributions for performers, composers or educators; Coleman is all three. In addition her work performing and composing, she is currently on faculty at Julliard and the Mannes School of Music Flute and Composition program as the Clara Mannes Fellow for Music Leadership. She has previously served on the faculty at the Frost School of Music (University of Miami) as Assistant Professor of Performance, Chamber Music and Entrepreneurship.
Though no recordings of the yet-unpremiered concerto are available, I have every reason to hope that it will become a staple of the repertoire. Coleman was the founding flutist of the Imani Winds, and as such has a terrific background in chamber music. Composers with such backgrounds tend to treat large ensembles like orchestras differently than convention would suggest. They’re more likely to write instrumental solo and small group features in unusual combinations, or to use so-called extended techniques; they tend to stay away from the standard soloist-versus-orchestra format of the concerto. This approach still leaves plenty of space for the soloist to shine, but also allows for more varied textures and expressive devices from the orchestra. Much of my confidence about the concerto comes from listening to the orchestral expansion Coleman’s piece Umoja, which was originally written as chamber music for the Imani Winds. In it, Coleman shows that even though she’s writing for much larger forces than chamber winds, the intricacy and individuality of the parts remains the same.
Below is the orchestral expansion (commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra) of Umoja, performed here by the Yale Philharmonia, recorded in 2023.
Michelle Cann, pianist
Michelle Cann, the pianist who will give the world premiere of Coleman’s piano concerto in June, is a formidably decorated artist. She has played with Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra, and the Orquestra Sinfônica Municipal de São Paulo, the San Francisco Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, and the London Philharmonia. She has been honored with the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, and the Christel DeHaan Artistic Partner of the American Piano Award—it’s inaugural recipient, and whose duties include artistic oversight of the competition. Cann is also one of the leading interpreters of the music of Florence Price. Her recordings of Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement and of Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price both won her Grammys in 2023 and 2025, respectively. Cann and Coleman have a musical influence in common—the Imani Winds. Cann is a friend and collaborator of the quintet, and I can only imagine that having this influence in common will give the premiere of Coleman’s concerto something extra-special. Coleman is her own composer and Cann is her own interpreter—they both bring their individual voices to the piece—but having the Imanis in common indicates (to me) their shared values and ideas about music that will surely come together in the world premiere.
Below is a recording of Cann performing Florence Price’s Concerto in D Minor in One Movement with the the U.S. Air Force Band’s Symphony Orchestra during the 2021/22 season.
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra has announced its 2025/26 season, which will feature a notable lineup of women. The concerts will include pieces by ten women and non-white composers—a noticeable departure from their 2024/25 season, which platformed mostly traditional orchestra repertoire including a six-concert Beethoven project. Two of the ten pieces in the 2025/26 season are commissioned by the Atlanta Symphony, so look for their premieres in future installments of WPA. The first is Valerie Coleman’s Concerto for Orchestra (Renaissance) celebrating the voices and culture of the Harlem Renaissance, and the second is a piece to be named by South Korean-American composer Nicky Sohn. In October, to celebrate Diwali, works by Reena Esmail and Nina Shekhar will feature prominently on the program.
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