Michael Coleman

Michael Coleman has participated as composer & pianist in numerous new music programs and festivals in the U.S and Russia and has also had works performed in Austria, Bahamas, Belgium, Costa Rica, France, Kazakhstan, México, and Uzbekistan.  Recent awards include 2nd Prize in the 2021 “She Lives Budapest Prize” International Composition Competition (Rome, Italy), “First Diploma” in the 2018 (National Category) and the 2019 & 2021 (International Category) Golden Key Competitions and he received the “AN ART Artistry” Prize in the International Composition Competition “The contemporary piano 2018” (Athens, Greece).   He was also a winner in the Kaleidoscope MusArt 2020 “Bagatelles for Beethoven” score-call competition was one of the five winners in the 2019 Músicos Trabajando score-call competition in Hermosillo, Sonora, México.  He was a recipient of the artist fellowship grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts (1994) and a Meet-the-Composer grant (1995) and has served as an adjudicator on numerous composition and performance competitions, including the 2009 SCI/ASCAP Region I Composition Competition and 2018, 2019, 2021, & 2022 Gulf Coast Steinway Society’s Concerto Competitions.  In March 2021 he received a commission from Pensacola State College to compose a brass fanfare (“Baars Fanfare”) which was premiered during the building dedication ceremony of the Baars Technology Building on April 9 at Pensacola State College.

As pianist, he has premiered his own works along with those by Merab Gagnidze, Kari Henrik Juusela, Jerry Sieg, and Sergei Zhukov.  As part of the duo Tone Twister, he and tubaist Tim Jackson have performed a variety of original and contemporary works for tuba and piano.  His Two Bagatelles were part of a 2007 CD release by pianist Jeri-Mae Astolfi through Capstone Records and his Seville Rag was on a 2016 CD by pianist Bobby van Deusen.  His String Quartet No. 1 will be on a 2020 CD release by the Amernet String Quartet titled Alabama String Quartets.  Steinway Artist Kadisha Onalbayeva performed Coleman’s The ’96 Etude at Carnegie Hall (June 6, 2018) and she premiered Arman (Piano Concerto No. 1) in 2016 with the Louisiana Sinfonietta under the direction of Dinos Constantinides.  He received his doctorate from the University of Maryland and holds degrees from the University of New Orleans and the University of South Alabama, studying with Lawrence Moss, Jerry Sieg, and Carl Alette.  He is on the faculties of Pensacola State College and the University of West Florida, and is the organist/music director at Zion Lutheran Church in Silverhill, Alabama.  He resides in Pensacola, Florida with his wife, Kadisha Onalbayeva, who is a Steinway Artist and composer.