Congratulations to composer and pianist Adegoke Steve Colson for winning the Fromm Commission! The Ensemble will premiere his new work in Fall 2024.
A highly exploratory musician and a leading member of the renowned Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Adegoke is an internationally known musical artist whose work challenges traditional separations between composition and improvisation.
A virtuoso pianist, Adegoke’s approach to the instrument emanates from jazz to explore a broad range of African American musical traditions, and his compositions deploy unusual turns of harmony to create sinuous moments of sonic irony. Connecting this kind of multiculturalism as a composer with larger currents of world musical expression, Adegoke stakes a radical claim of cosmopolitanism that challenges genre prescriptions.
These commissions represent one of the principal ways that the Fromm Music Foundation seeks to strengthen composition and to bring contemporary concert music closer to the public.