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sai-national.org • WINTER 2018 • PAN PIPES 13 COMPOSERS Baltimore Composers Forum: 25 th Anniversary Celebration A Unique Model for Composers By Hollis Thoms T welve selections in all: one retelling the Little Red Riding Hood folktale from the huntsman's perspective, a second based on the story of "little suck-a-thumb," a third on poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay, a fourth drawing on folk lullabies, the fih on a poem on chemical warfare by Siegfried Sassoon, a sixth dedicated to the composer's wife, a seventh a medley of six nursery rhymes with a minimal use of music theater elements, an eighth on love poems by Emily Dickinson, a ninth on poems by African American poet E. Ethelbert Miller, a tenth based on Old Testament women re-imagined from a feminist point of view, an eleventh on a poem by Sara Teasdale, and the last a song based on a discovery of the massacre 10,000 years ago of 27 hunter-gatherers near the shore of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. Songs of Love and Menace: a diverse and engaging program of vocal music for soprano, tenor, and piano presented by the Baltimore Composers Forum (BCF). A Brief History In 2018, the Baltimore Composers Forum celebrates its 25 th anniversary year. Presently, it has around fieen active members with an informal board of five who plan and present two to three concerts a year of music composed by its current members. e organization has never attained 501c3 status, has gone through a number of transformations, and has sometimes thrived and sometimes struggled with funding and audiences, but its core members over the years have believed in its mission. e mission, states Harriet Katz, the current treasurer of the group, is "to support local composers by presenting concerts of their original works; to promote and facilitate interaction by local composers with one another and with other artists, performers, and arts organizations; and to educate the community about new music." George Spicka, a founding and current member of the Baltimore Composers Forum, recalls that composer Dawn Culbertson, hoping to recreate the camaraderie she experienced while a graduate student at Peabody, banded together with five other composers in October 1992 with the idea of forming a group to assist in getting their works heard. at group, the Baltimore Composers Coalition, held its first concert on May 16, 1993 at the Church of St. Michael and All Angels Great Hall, featuring ten works by seven different composers. A second concert was programmed a month later, featuring eleven Composers and performers after the program of Songs of Love and Menace.

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