Composer and Flutist Valerie Coleman Signs with New Management

She joins the roster of New York's Primo Artists for worldwide general management, effective immediately

(Photo credit: Matthew Murphy)

Valerie Coleman will be represented by Charlotte Lee, Founder of Primo Artists, alongside violinists Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Nicola Benedetti, and Randall Goosby.

Named Performance Today’s Classical Woman of the Year in 2020, Coleman was also deemed one of the “Top 35 Women Composers” by The Washington Post.

Former flutist of the Imani Winds, of which she is the creator and founder, Coleman was appointed to the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater New Works dual commissioning program in 2021/22.

The orchestral arrangement of her work, "Umoja," was premiered by The Philadelphia Orchestra in Philadelphia and at Carnegie Hall in 2019 — marking the orchestra's first time performing a classical work by a living female African-American composer.

The piece was also chosen by Chamber Music America as one of the “Top 101 Great American Ensemble Works.”

As a pedagogue, Coleman was recently appointed to the Mannes School of Music Flute and Composition faculty and will serve a year-long residency at The Juilliard School in their Music Advancement Program through American Composers Forum.

She was previously on the faculty at The Frost School of Music at the University of Miami.

“Valerie Coleman is a daring, imaginative composer-performer whose voice and spirit is fearless, freely expressive and full of character," said Charlotte Lee. "Her gift of storytelling and the messages on society she portrays are inspiring and compelling. She will no doubt have an important place in American sound, and we look forward to building on what is already an international career and legacy in the canon of classical music."

“I am delighted to join the roster of Primo Artists and honored to be with such a preeminent artist management agency," said Coleman. "Charlotte Lee and I met in 2019 and she is a savvy pioneer who understands what a 21st century artist needs. I look forward to our collaboration and to the future."