Classical pianist Chloe Flower will perform a concert of Christmas Music with a local string section Tuesday at the Wheeler Opera House at 6 p.m. Flower will be playing music from her new album “She Composed: The Holidays,” which is believed to be the first holiday album ever released with music composed entirely by women.
When you hear the word popsicle, surely the image of ice cream on a stick comes to mind. But for Chloe Flower, the genre bending pianist who takes the stage at the Wheeler Opera House Tuesday at 7 p.m., the term popsicle refers to the way she takes the classical music that is the foundation of her musical practice and blends it with with other styles of music — from pop, to hip hop, to electronic dance music.
The commercial breakthrough moment in Flower’s career occurred when she appeared at the 2019 Grammy Awards with pop/rap/R&B star Cardi B. She signed a record deal with Sony shortly thereafter.
Tuesday at the Wheeler, Flower will return to her roots and play songs rooted in classical music. Much of the show will feature music from the album she released last month “She Composed: The Holidays,” which Flower says she believes is the first Christmas album of instrumental music composed entirely by women.
Flower grew up outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She started taking piano at the age of 4. When she was 12 years-old she drove by the Bartok-Kabilevsky International Piano Competition in Radford Virginia and begged her mother to take her inside to check it out.
“I snuck backstage, and I was able to meet the first-place winner, who was around my age and she introduced me to her piano teacher at Manhattan School of Music Pre-College. I begged for an audition, and he accepted me into a studio, and then that’s really when I started taking serious piano lessons in classical music.”
Flower studied at Juilliard in the pre-college school before moving on to the Royal Academy of Music in London. She bounced around a few universities in the states — Northwestern and the University of Pennsylvania —- but couldn’t find her jam, as it were.
“I couldn’t find a place for myself that felt right,” Flower said. “I was always a little bit out of the box. I love learning so I wanted to continue school, but I never actually graduated, which is hilarious. I could have been a doctor; that’s how much school I’ve done.”
Flower was interested in dippering her toes into crossover music and in 2009 she reached out to Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds management. She had Edmonds a few years earlier and told him about her music. To her surprise, Edmonds agreed to meet with her to discuss a management/record deal. A month later, in January 2010, Flower was in Los Angeles and Edmonds helped her get a record deal with the Island Def Jam Records label.
Over the next decade, Flower estimates she recorded over 200 songs, most of which have not been released, some of which she released as singles.
Her debut eponymous album is complete with spoken word by Deepak Chopra. She released her first holiday record, “Chloe Hearts Christmas,” in 2023. She released two records this year: “I Love Me More” in May followed by “She Composed.”
In addition to Babyface and Carly B., Flower has collaborated with Celine Dion, 2 Chainz, Questlove, Nas and Johnny Mathis to name a few. Who are her dream collabs?
“My idol my whole life has been Yo-Yo Ma,” Flower said. “I’m really good friends with Questlove, so I actually did an interview with Yo-Yo Ma, and he invited me and I actually got to sit and talk with Yo-Yo for like 10 minutes. I love everything about his soul and how much he loves Bach. We both have a deep love for Bach. That would be my dream collab.
“I think in the pop world, I love to collaborate with vocalists. Singers are amazing to me because I can’t sing. I’ve always wanted to collaborate with Ariana Grande. I love her voice; doing a ballad would be my dream.”
Flower said her biggest goal with the new Christmas album was to shine the light on women composers.
“I was 25 years old before I even realized that female composers even existed. There is such a dearth of women’s voices in classical music. Across 111 orchestras, over 30 countries in the 2023-2024 season, around the world, only 7% were composed by women, and then in the holiday season, that number is zero.”
Keeping in line with the all women theme, Flower will be joined Tuesday by local musicians Lindsay Bobyak on bass, Amanda Gessler on cello, Anja Endestad on violin, Brittni Brown on violin, and Delaney Meyers on viola.
Flower said she hopes people are inspired by the music and that people walk away with the desire to explore more female composers, lyricists and musicians.
“I hope that people seek to discover and listen to more music performed by women not only during the holiday but during the year,” Flower said. “That’s really the takeaway for me: That’s the whole point of the album, to get a deeper appreciation of the music composed by these incredible women because it’s amazing.”
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