An Evening with the 2022 CFA Distinguished Alumni Awardees
(From left to right) Valerie Coleman (CFA’95, BUTI’89), Michelle Hurd (CFA’88), Alexi Worth (CFA’93)
Valerie Coleman, Michelle Hurd, Alexi Worth
Boston University College of Fine Arts announces the recipients of the 2022 Distinguished Alumni Awards, the most prestigious awards conferred by the College.
Boston University College of Fine Arts (CFA) is proud to announce the 2022 CFA Distinguished Alumni Award recipients. This year’s honorees are internationally acclaimed flutist and composer Valerie Coleman (CFA’95, BUTI’89), actor and activist Michelle Hurd (CFA’88) who currently stars in Paramount+’s Star Trek: Picard, and visual artist and Guggenheim Fellow Alexi Worth (CFA’93).
“I look forward to gathering in-person to celebrate three extraordinary artists who are leaders in the fields of composition, visual art, and acting. In addition, they are engaged, dedicated mentors to the next generation of young artists. Valerie Coleman, Michelle Hurd, and Alexi Worth exemplify the very best of BU,” says Harvey Young, Dean of Boston University College of Fine Arts.
The Distinguished Alumni Awards are the most prestigious awards conferred by the College of Fine Arts at Boston University. Since 1986, awards have been presented to individuals who have distinguished themselves with outstanding achievements in their careers, communities, and in service to the arts.
The entire BU community is invited to join us in celebrating these remarkable alums at the 2022 CFA Distinguished Alumni Awards. The ceremony will be hosted in the Luo Yan Lobby of BU’s Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre on Thursday, September 29, 2022, starting at 5:00 pm ET as part of BU’s Alumni Weekend.
ABOUT THE AWARDEES
Valerie Coleman
Valerie Coleman (CFA’95, BUTI’89) is regarded by many as an iconic artist who continues to pave her own unique path as a composer, GRAMMY®-nominated flutist, and entrepreneur. Highlighted as one of the “Top 35 Women Composers” by The Washington Post, she was named Performance Today’s 2020 Classical Woman of the Year, an honor bestowed to an individual who has made a significant contribution to classical music as a performer, composer, or educator.
Coleman was named to the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater New Works dual commissioning program in 2021/22. This season sees performances of her works by orchestras around the United States including the Minnesota Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Sarasota Orchestra, New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Yale Symphony Orchestra, Vermont Symphony, and The Louisville Orchestra. Former flutist of the Imani Winds, Coleman is the creator and founder of this acclaimed ensemble whose 24-year legacy is documented and featured in a dedicated exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Along with composer-harpist Hannah Lash, and composer-violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama, she co-founded and currently performs as flutist of the performer-composer trio Umama Womama.
As a performer, Coleman has appeared at Carnegie Hall and The Kennedy Center and with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Hartford Symphony, New Haven Symphony, Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Banff, Spoleto USA, and Bravo! Vail. As a guest flutist, she has participated in the Mid-Atlantic Flute Fair, New Jersey Flute Fair, South Carolina Flute Society Festival, Colorado Flute Fair, Mid-South Flute Fair, and the National Women’s Music Festival.
Coleman’s work as a recording artist includes an extensive discography. With Imani Winds, she has appeared on Sony Classical, Deutsche Grammophon, Sony Classical, Naxos, Cedille Records, and eOne, and as a guest flutist on albums with Wayne Shorter Quartet, Steve Coleman and the Council of Balance, Chick Corea, Brubeck Brothers, Edward Simon, Bruce Adolphe, and Mohammed Fairouz. Her compositions and performances are regularly broadcast on NPR, WNYC, WQXR, Minnesota Public Radio, Sirius XM, Radio France, Australian Broadcast Company, and Radio New Zealand.
Committed to arts education, entrepreneurship, and chamber music advocacy, Coleman created the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival in 2011, a summer mentorship program in New York City welcoming young leaders from over 100 international institutions. She has held flute and chamber music masterclasses at institutions in 49 states and over five continents, including The Juilliard School, Curtis Institute, Manhattan School of Music, Mannes College of Music, New England Conservatory, Oberlin College, Eastman School of Music, Yale University, Carnegie Mellon, Interlochen Arts Academy, Beijing Conservatory, Brazil’s Campo do Jordão Festival, and Australia’s Musica Viva.
Coleman joined the Mannes School of Music Flute and Composition faculty in Fall 2021 as the Clara Mannes Fellow for Music Leadership. Prior to that she served on the faculty at The Frost School of Music at the University of Miami as Assistant Professor of Performance, Chamber Music and Entrepreneurship. In 2021/22, she led a year-long residency at The Juilliard School in their Music Advancement Program through American Composers Forum.
Coleman’s compositions are published by Theodore Presser and her own company, VColeman Music. She studied composition with Martin Amlin and Randy Wolfe and flute with Julius Baker, Judith Mendenhall, Doriot Dwyer, Leone Buyse, and Alan Weiss. She and her family are based in New York City.
For more on Coleman, visit vcolemanmusic.com.
Michelle Hurd
Michelle Hurd (CFA’88) currently stars opposite Patrick Stewart in Paramount+’s Star Trek: Picard. Hurd recently completed work on AMC’s Isle of the Dead, an upcoming The Walking Dead spinoff. In addition to her explosive performance as “Shepherd” on NBC’s hit drama Blindspot, Hurd recurred on FOX’s action crime series Lethal Weapon.
Hurd is known for her roles in Starz’s hit horror comedy Ash Vs. Evil Dead, the Marvel Universe series Daredevil and Jessica Jones (“DA Samantha Reyes”), and the A&E summer series, The Glades (“Colleen Manus”). Other television credits include: Pose, Hawaii Five-0, Devious Maids, 90210, Witches of East End, How To Get Away With Murder, Bosch, Mysteries of Laura, Pretty Little Liars, Raising Hope, The Good Wife, Law & Order: SVU (“Det. Jeffries”), Gossip Girl, ER, Bones, According To Jim, Law & Order, Smith, Skin, Leap Years, Charmed, The O.C., Kevin Hill, The Practice, and Another World.
Hurd recently completed production on the films Somewhere in Montana, starring opposite Graham McTavish, and The Plus One alongside Cedric the Entertainer. Other film credits include Bad Hair, Being Frank opposite Jim Gaffigan, Be Afraid, We Don’t Belong Here (alongside Catherine Keener and Maya Rudolph), Search Engines, Within The Dark, Girl Most Likely (with Kristen Wiig), Random Hearts, Personals, Double Parked, Wolf, and King of New York.
Theater credits include: The Dog in the Manger (Shakespeare Theatre Company), AMI (MCC), Getting Away with Murder (Broadway), The Violet Hour (Off-Broadway), Looking for the Pony (Off-Broadway), and 900 Oneonta (Off-Broadway).
Hurd is SAG-AFTRA’s National Vice President of Los Angeles and Chair of the SAG-AFTRA National Sexual Harassment Prevention Committee. For her commitment to union work, Hurd received the SAG-AFTRA President’s Award for Union Service in 2021.
Hurd is a proud alumnus of NYC’s premiere artist community at Westbeth. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Boston University College of Fine Arts in 1988.
Follow Hurd via Instagram @realmichellehurd or through Twitter @ItsMichelleHurd.
Alexi Worth
Alexi Worth (CFA’93) is an award-winning painter and Guggenheim Fellow whose work explores what it means, in our digitally supersaturated environment, for pictures to be “mindmade and handmade.” In his own distinctively precise and compressed style, Worth offers puzzling, reinvented versions of ordinary things: most recently wineglasses, hands, and leaves. With subtly unusual surfaces and viewpoints, Worth’s art differs from much recent figuration in its modesty and simplicity, suggesting an effort to return the contemplative power of abstraction to figurative art.
Worth has been exhibiting in New York since 2001. Selected exhibitions include Nearness at DC Moore Gallery, NY; Flat Earth Conspiracy at George Adams Gallery, NY; A Fairly Secret Army at Wild Palms Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany; Feast for the Eyes at the Nassau County Museum of Art, NY; and Open Windows, curated by Carroll Dunham at the Addison Gallery in Andover, MA.
He has received awards from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Tiffany Foundation, and the New England Foundation for the Arts. Also known as a critic, Worth has written about a wide range of artists, including El Anatsui, Carroll Dunham, Jasper Johns, and Jackie Saccoccio.
Worth attended Yale University and the Skowhegan School of Art before entering BU’s MFA painting program in the era of the “Two Johns,” that is, the period when the program was dominated by two powerfully contrasting (but equally illuminating) personalities, John Moore and John Walker.
After BU, Worth lived for several years in the Boston area, working in a studio in the Castignetti building in the North End, since demolished as part of the Big Dig. He taught at the University of New Hampshire Durham, before moving to Brooklyn, where he still lives, with his wife, the architect Erika Belsey Worth, and their two sons.
In addition to his painting, Worth has taught at several MFA programs, including UPenn, Yale, Pratt, and the New York Academy of Art. He has also written extensively about art for publications including Artforum, ARTnews, Art in America, and the New Yorker.
For more on Worth, visit dcmooregallery.com/artists/alexi-worth and follow on Instagram @alexiworth.
About Us
Founded in 1839, Boston University is an internationally recognized institution of higher education and research. With more than 34,000 students, it is the fourth-largest independent university in the United States. BU consists of 17 schools and colleges, along with a number of multi-disciplinary centers and institutes integral to the University’s research and teaching mission. In 2012, BU joined the Association of American Universities (AAU), a consortium of 62 leading research universities in the United States and Canada. Learn more at bu.edu.
Established in 1954, Boston University College of Fine Arts (CFA) is a community of artist-scholars and scholar-artists who are passionate about the fine and performing arts, committed to diversity and inclusion, and determined to improve the lives of others through art. With programs in Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts, CFA prepares students for a meaningful creative life by developing their intellectual capacity to create art, shift perspective, think broadly, and master relevant skills. CFA offers a wide array of undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs, as well as a range of online degrees and certificates. Learn more at bu.edu/cfa