Gene Coleman

Clarinetist Gene Coleman maintains an active presence across new music, modern classical, and avant-garde jazz. He entered the world in 1958 and pursued studies in music, film, and visual arts at Chicago’s School of Art Institute, his hometown institution, while simultaneously training in composition. Numerous awards and commissions have come his way from the Illinois Arts Council, the Jory Foundation, and additional sources. Over 40 works stand to his credit as a composer, and his collaborators include the celebrated figures Malcolm Goldstein, Vinko Globokar, and Roscoe Mitchell. By the close of the 1990s he was directing Ensemble Noamnesia and participating in Plus-Minus, the venture formed with musicians from Austria’s Polwechsel, an association that originated in 1997.