Valerie Coleman (born 1970)
Valerie Coleman was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in the West End inner-city neighborhood that gave rise to Muhammed Ali. She was fascinated with music at an early age and had composed three symphonies by the age of 14. She earned two bachelor’s degrees from Boston University and a master’s degree in flute performance from the Mannes School of Music, where she currently teaches.
Valerie Coleman lives with her family in New York City. She founded the ensemble Imani Winds (from the Swahili word for “faith”), with which she plays flute. This is Imani Winds performing one of Valerie Coleman’s more jazz- and blue-infused works, the 2006 four-movement suite Portraits of Josephine. (That’s Josephine Baker, of course.)
Here they are performing her composition Umoja:
Her 2020 work entitled Seven O’Clock Shout, alludes to people hanging from their apartment windows celebrating frontline workers during the Covid pandemic:
She has said about this work,
To me, Seven O’Clock Shout is a declaration of our survival. It is something that allows us our agency to take back the kindness that is in our hearts and the emotions that cause us such turmoil. … We cheer on the essential workers with a primal and fierce urgency to let them know that we stand with them and each other.”