World Premiere: June 6, 2020
Most Recent HSO Performance: This is the HSO’s first performance of this work.

Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, oboe, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 1 trombone, tuba, timpani, bass drum, crash cymbals, suspended cymbal, whistle, claves, cowbell, marimba, vibraphone, harp and strings: violin I, violin II, viola, cello, and bass
Duration: 5' 

Valerie Coleman, Performance Today’s “2020 Classical Woman of the Year,” was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1970 and began her music studies at age eleven; within three years she had written three symphonies and won several local and state flute competitions. Coleman received bachelor’s degrees in both theory/ composition and flute performance from Boston University, where she was two-time winner of the Young Artist Competition and recipient of the University’s Woodwind Award; she earned a master’s degree in flute performance from the Mannes College of Music in New York. Coleman made her Carnegie Hall recital debut as winner of Meet the Composer’s 2003 Edward and Sally Van Lier Memorial Fund Award; among her additional distinctions are the Aspen Music Festival Wombwell Kentucky Award, inaugural Michelle E. Sahm Memorial Award from the Tanglewood Music Festival, first recipient in the Brooklyn Philharmonic’s Mentorship Program, ASCAP Concert Music Award, Chamber Music America’s Classical Commissioning Program, Herb Alpert Ragdale Residency Award, and nominations from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and United States Artists. 

Valerie Coleman was the founder of the Grammy-nominated Imani Winds and the ensemble’s flutist and resident composer; her Umoja (“Unity” in Swahili), honored as one of the “Top 100 American Chamber Works” by Chamber Music America, is the group’s signature piece. Coleman has also performed across North America and Europe as soloist and chamber musician collaborating with such renowned ensembles and artists as the Philadelphia Orchestra, Hartford Symphony, New Haven Symphony, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Spoleto USA, Dover Quartet, Orion String Quartet, Miami String Quartet, Harlem String Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma, Ani and Ida Kavafian, David Shifrin, members of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and jazz legends Paquito D’Rivera, Stefon Harris, Jason Moran and René Marie. Coleman’s rapidly expanding creative catalog includes works for orchestra, concert band, chamber ensembles, ballet (Portraits of Josephine Baker), and arrangements for woodwind quintet; in September 2021, she was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera along with two other Black composers—Jessie Montgomery and Joel Thompson—to develop new works in collaboration with the Lincoln Center Theater. Valerie Coleman has appeared as performer, guest artist, clinician and adjudicator at festivals, concert series, universities and flute societies across the country, served on the boards of Composers Now, Sphinx LEAD, APAP’s Classical Connections Committee, and National Flute Association’s New Music Advisory Committee and Board Nomination Committee, and taught at Juilliard and the University of Miami; she was appointed Clara Mannes Fellow for Music Leadership at the Mannes School of Music in New York in 2021. 

When Covid shut down concert life In March 2020, musicians began exploring ways that modern technology could keep them in contact not just with audiences but with each other. Valerie Coleman’s Seven O’Clock Shout, commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra, not only addressed that technical challenge but also used the circumstance of those difficult months as the inspiration for its content. Coleman composed Seven O’Clock Shout for a modest-size ensemble, parts were distributed to the individual isolated musicians, the tricky on-line coordination of the players was achieved, and the virtual premiere was directed by Yannick Nézet-Séguin on July 6, 2020 (video at philorch.org); the same forces gave the concert premiere on October 6, 2021 at the gala re-opening of New York’s Carnegie Hall after its eighteen-month closure. 

“Seven O’Clock Shout is an anthem inspired by the tireless frontline workers during the Covid-19 pandemic,” wrote Coleman, “and the heartwarming ritual of evening serenades that brought people together amidst isolation to celebrate life and the sacrifices of heroes. The work begins with a distant and solitary solo between two trumpets in fanfare fashion to commemorate the isolation forced upon humankind, and the need to reach out to one another. The fanfare blossoms into a lushly dense landscape of nature, symbolizing both the caregiving acts of nurses and doctors as they try to save lives and nature transforming and healing herself during a time of human self-isolation. 

“One of the technical devices that could facilitate a multi-track recording of separated musicians playing as if they were in the same room is the use an ‘ostinato’ [i.e., ‘obstinate’ in Italian], a rhythmic motif that repeats to generate forward motion and, in this case, ‘groove.’ The repeating ostinato patterns here are laid down by the bass section, allowing the English horn and strings to float over them, gradually building up to 7:00 p.m., when cheers, claps, clangings of pots and pans, and shouts ring through the air of cities around the world. The trumpets drive an infectious rhythm, layered with a traditional Cuban rhythmic pattern, while solo trombone boldly rings out an anthem in an African call- and-response style. The orchestra ’shouts’ back in response and the entire ensemble rallies into an anthem that embodies the struggles and triumph of humanity. Seven O’Clock Shout ends in a proud anthem in which we all come together with grateful hearts to acknowledge that we have survived yet another day.”