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An American composer who has written works for concert orchestra, film, and theater, among other varied media, Michael Abels is most widely known for his suspenseful, often-jarring horror scores for director Jordan Peele. Recognized in classical circles for merging elements of popular music into orchestral classical pieces such as Global Warming (1991) and Delights & Dances (2007), he made his big-screen debut with Peele's 2017 film Get Out. Their third hit collaboration, Nope, saw release in 2022.

Born in Phoenix, Arizona, and raised in rural South Dakota, Abels began taking piano lessons at a young age. He went on to study piano at the University of Southern California, following it in 1985 and 1986 with enrollment at the California Institute for the Arts, where he studied West African music. His early piece Global Warning, a commission by the Phoenix Youth Symphony, was an orchestral work honoring international folk musics. After its premiere in 1991, it was later performed by such prestigious groups as the Chicago, Baltimore, and Detroit Symphony Orchestras, just to name a few. Following the election of President Nelson Mandela, Global Warming was among the first works by an African-American composer to be performed by the National Symphony of South Africa. Some of Abels' other compositions from the '90s included American Variations on Swing Low Sweet Chariot (premiered in 1993 by Doc Severinsen and the Phoenix Symphony), Frederick's Fables (premiered in 1994 with narrators James Earl Jones and Garrison Keillor), and 1998's Dance for Martin's Dream, a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. A commission for the Los Angeles Opera, Abels' opera Homies & Popz debuted in 2000. It told the story of activist Ted Hayes, who successfully organized a cricket team for L.A.'s inner-city youth.

Abels responded to the September 11 attacks in 2001 with the chorale Tribute, which was the first piece to be performed by the National Symphony Orchestra following 9/11. Works including Urban Legends and Aquadia -- a co-commission by the Chicago Sinfonietta and Shedd Aquarium for an installation -- followed in the late 2000s.

Abels' first music for a film was the score to early 2017's Get Out, the directorial debut of actor/writer Jordan Peele. The soundtrack recording arrived on Back Lot Music (digital) and Waxwork (vinyl). That same year, the composer provided additional music for the crime drama Detroit, with main composer James Newton Howard. Abels rejoined Peele for the horror/thriller Us, released in theaters in 2019, with the score also issued on Back Lot and Waxwork. In the meantime, demand for his scores picked up considerably, and his music could be heard in the sci-fi film See You Yesterday (2019), crime drama Bad Education (2020), and dark fantasy Nightbooks (2021), just to name some of his projects before he reunited with Peele for 2022's Nope, a blockbuster genre-bender filmed with IMAX cameras. Abels' soundtrack for the low-budget thriller Breaking followed later the same year. ~ Marcy Donelson

Composer and flutist Valerie Coleman has gained wide recognition for music that fuses classical styles with African American vernacular elements. She founded the wind quintet Imani Winds and has recorded frequently with that group.

Coleman was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1970 and grew up in the same West End neighborhood that had been home to boxing great Muhammad Ali. She grew up poor and took to the flute even before she had regular access to the instrument, playing with sticks in her yard and pretending they were flutes. At 11, she began formal musical education, not only on the flute but as a composer; working with a portable organ at home, she wrote three symphonies by the time she was 14. Coleman attended Boston University, earning a double degree in theory/composition and flute performance. She went on to the Mannes College of Music in New York, where her flute teachers included Julius Baker and Judith Mendenhall; she studied composition with Martin Amlin and Randall Woolf. Coleman founded Imani Winds in 1997, hoping to provide role models for young African American wind players. The group has been durably successful, earning a Grammy Award nomination in 2005 for its album The Classical Underground.

As a solo flutist, Coleman served in the early 2000s as an understudy to Eugenia Zukerman at Lincoln Center in New York. In 2002, Coleman's wind quintet Umoja was listed among the Top 101 Great American Works by Chamber Music America. She has also appeared at Alice Tully Hall in New York, Kennedy Center in Washington, and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, among other prestigious venues. Her compositions are mostly for wind quintet (she has served as Imani Winds' resident composer), other chamber ensembles, band, orchestra, and solo flute. Her works have been recorded on the Cedille, Sony Classics, and Naxos labels, among others, and in 2019, her Shotgun Houses was included on the Chamber Music Northwest collection Clarinet Quintets for Our Time. In 2023, flutist Alexa Still issued an entire album devoted to Coleman on the Oberlin Music label, and by that time, more than 15 of her compositions had been recorded. ~ James Manheim

African American composer Carlos Simon's music reflects social justice concerns and has been widely performed by top orchestras around the U.S. In 2021, he became the composer-in-residence at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Simon was born in Washington, D.C., in 1986 but grew up in Atlanta. His father was a Pentecostal preacher, and he was not allowed to listen to any music other than gospel. Simon has pointed to the influence of gospel on his concert works, which balance notated and improvisatory elements. He took up the piano at age ten, playing at his father's church, and then began piano lessons. Simon attended Morehouse College and Georgia State University in Atlanta. He went on for a doctorate at the University of Michigan, studying with Michael Daugherty and Evan Chambers. After graduating, he worked as a keyboard player and musical director for R&B singers Angie Stone and Jennifer Holliday. In 2018, Simon was named a Sundance/Time Warner Composer Fellow. Simon's 2017 work Amen! for wind ensemble was recorded by the North Texas Wind Symphony in 2019.

Simon has fulfilled commissions from the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, as well as the Los Angeles Opera and Washington National Opera. He gained wide attention for the Requiem for the Enslaved, which combined African American spirituals, the Latin requiem mass (in English, or simply as inspiration for instrumental music), and spoken words. Simon received the Sphinx Medal of Excellence in 2021, becoming only the second composer so honored, and the following year, he landed on a Washington Post list of Composers and Performers to Watch in 2022. Signed to the Decca label, Simon released an album featuring Requiem for the Enslaved that year, with the Hub New Music ensemble and rapper and spoken word artist Marco Pavé. He is an assistant professor at Georgetown University, the story of whose sale of slaves was told in Requiem for the Enslaved. Simon planned a new work for the Minnesota Orchestra in 2023, a tribute to George Floyd. ~ James Manheim

Composer Jessie Montgomery has merged classical traditions with vernacular music of various types, often with an emphasis on social justice. She also performs chamber music and is a noted educator.

Montgomery was born on December 8, 1981, in New York. Her father, Ed Montgomery, was a composer, and her mother, Robbie McCauley, was a playwright. Montgomery was raised in a highly creative neighborhood environment where she was exposed to various artistic and political movements. She attended the Juilliard School, earning a bachelor's degree in violin performance, and went on to New York University. There, she received a bachelor's degree in composition for film and multimedia in 2012. By that time, she had already been involved for some years with the Sphinx Organization, a Detroit group that seeks to further the careers of young African American and Latin American string players and composers. Montgomery received several grants from the group and has served as its composer-in-residence. For the first part of her career, Montgomery mixed performing and teaching; she formed the PUBLIQuartet string ensemble in 2010 and was also a member of the Catalyst Quartet while teaching at Community MusicWorks in Providence, Rhode Island.

Montgomery has increasingly focused on composition, often mixing classical elements with contemporary pop and folk styles and world traditions. Her 2014 work Banner merged The Star-Spangled Banner with protest songs and other anthems from around the world. Montgomery's works have been performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, and, abroad, the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. She has been the recipient of commissions from organizations as diverse as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America. By the mid-2020s, more than a dozen of her compositions had been recorded, and her work was the focus of the 2023 Azica recording Jessie Montgomery: Strum - Music for Strings. ~ James Manheim