Valerie Coleman receives a boost from her ‘Fanfare for Uncommon Times’

The most famous fanfare in the last 100 years, at least in the United States, has to be Aaron Copland’s instantly recognizable Fanfare for the Common Man (1942), a staple on orchestral programs. 

Right behind it is arguably a kind of follow-up by Joan Tower, Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is really a series of six short compositions written over a few decades, with the first one, from 1986, performed most often.

A more recent work in this vein, Valerie Coleman’s similarly titled Fanfare for Uncommon Times, was premiered by its commissioner, the New York-based Orchestra of St. Luke’s, in 2021, and the piece is quickly gaining notice.   

“It has joy in it,” Coleman said. “It has a lot of grit, it has a lot of fight, and it has a lot of energy. I wanted to convey the message of not only solidarity, but send out energy to whoever listens to it — that they feel stronger for the experience. That they are able to get through these uncommon times with a little more pep in their step.”

Among the latest ensembles to take up the fanfare is the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, an internationally recognized pre-professional training orchestra that operates under the auspices of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Negaunee Music Institute.

Principal Conductor Ken-David Masur and the Civic will perform the work Jan. 19-20 as part of a program that also includes Jessie Montgomery’s Transfigure to Grace and Sergei Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2. (The Jan. 19 performance is at the South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 S. South Shore Dr., and the Jan. 20 concert is at Symphony Center. Tickets for each venue will become available Jan. 3.)

“It has joy in it. It has a lot of grit, it has a lot of fight, and it has a lot of energy. I wanted to convey the message of not only solidarity, but send out energy to whoever listens to it — that they feel stronger for the experience." — Composer Valerie Coleman on her Fanfare for Uncommon Times

Coleman, named by Performance Today as its 2020 Classical Woman of the Year, probably remains best known as the founder of Imani Winds, a renowned wind quintet that was initially composed entirely of Black and Latino musicians. (in a UChicago Presents event, Imani Winds will perform Feb. 21 at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, 5850 S Woodlawn Ave.)

She was a graduate student at the Mannes School of Music in New York when she decided in 1996 that she wanted to assemble a chamber ensemble. The group took its name from the Swahili word for “faith.” Because Coleman was a flutist, a wind quintet was the obvious configuration, and she filled out the original group with Torin Spellman-Diaz, oboe; Monica Ellis, bassoon; Mariam Adam, clarinet, and Jeff Scott, French horn.

“I basically asked colleagues in the music scene here in New York City,” she said. “It’s a large town but a small town at the same time. Each one of the members was recommended, and I gave each person a cold phone call.”

Imani Winds has gone on to tour internationally and gain three Grammy Award nominations, emphasizing repertoire by underrecognized, often non-European composers right from the start. (The group won its first Grammy earlier this year for its recording of “Passion for Bach and Coltrane,” composed by Jeff Scott, in the best classical compendium category.) In 2008, Imani Winds established the Legacy Commissioning Project, which has focused on new works by composers of color and others from diverse backgrounds.

But Coleman’s composing, the other side of her musical activities, began to play a bigger role in her life as she became more acclaimed in that realm. It became harder to carve out the time she needed to write, given the heavy demands of the quintet’s travels. So she left Imani Winds in 2018.

“Touring being what it was, it started to not mesh fully with my composition career, which was growing,” she said. “And life just happens with chamber groups, and you know when it is time to leave and really start to build up your own artistry.”

Coleman still stays in touch with the other founding members of Imani Winds, and she is even taking part in a recording spearheaded by Adam, the clarinetist, but her career has essentially flipped. “Flute is still at the forefront of my career,” she said, “but composition is what is driving my career more than anything right now.”

Nothing has propelled Coleman’s composition career forward more than her multiple versions of a work titled Umoja, the Swahili word for “unity.” It began informally as a short, non-notated piece for women’s choir that the composer created for Kwanzaa and taught the singers by rote.

But she considers the real beginning of the piece to be the 2001 quintet version for Imani Winds that was included among the Top 101 Great American Works by Chamber Music America a year later.

Coleman has gone on to create arrangements for brass quintet, string quartet and wind ensemble. In 2019, the Philadelphia Orchestra debuted a 10-minute extended version that turned out to be an important milestone for her. It led to other commissions from the ensemble, including her Concerto for Orchestra, which the Philadelphia Orchestra premiered in May.

“That opportunity, that was something very special and treasured,” she said of the 2019 commission. “And over the years, I’ve learned to pay close attention to how the musicians in the orchestra play, that beautiful, amazing Philadelphia sound that is robust and caring with really intense nuance, much like the most established chamber-music ensemble that has been playing together for years and years. It was really a treat to have that kind of investment.”

Coleman is quick to acknowledge that she did not conceive the catchy title of the piece that the Civic Orchestra will play in January, instead crediting the name to James Roe, the president and executive director of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. He came to her during the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic and asked her to write a “fanfare for uncommon times” — a work that would address that difficult period and also provide a sense of solidarity. And she agreed to take up the challenge.

A fanfare is a short work, sometimes called a flourish, typically written for trumpets and other brass instruments and often accompanied by percussion, as is the case with this piece. Such compositions tend to be spirited, even heroic, in nature.

“You hear all sorts of things,” Coleman said about Fanfare for Uncommon Times, “because right now everything is just so complex in the world, and that was only a few years ago [when it was written], but nothing has changed in that way. You already know. I don’t need to spell it out.”

Coleman is delighted that the Civic Orchestra and other ensembles are choosing to perform the piece, giving it a real sense of popular momentum.

“It’s every living composer’s goal to have a robust circulation of their works,” she said. “So I feel that Fanfare for Uncommon Times, because it speaks to now, it has a particular relevance that allows it to be programmed a little bit more. And I like to think that audiences really get it — the quirky aspects of it, but also the patriotism and the humanity of it.”