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The American Composers Forum is an American organization that promotes and assists American composers and contemporary classical music. It was founded in 1973 as the Minnesota Composers Forum and is based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. As of 2000 it was the largest composer-service organization in the country. [1] Its chief executive is Vanessa Rose.
The Forum was founded as the Minnesota Composers Forum in 1973 by a group of University of Minnesota graduate students—including Libby Larsen, Stephen Paulus, and Marjorie Rusche [2] —with a $400 grant from the University’s Student Club Activities Fund. In 1996, it changed its name to the American Composers Forum, and established chapters in New York City, Boston, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, California. The group acts as a national umbrella organization for locally funded chapters in Minnesota (based in Saint Paul), Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area, in addition to volunteer-led chapters in New York City and Los Angeles. In 2007, the group, along with the American Music Center, extended membership to composition students at six affiliated academic institutions: Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music, the New England Conservatory, the San Francisco Conservatory, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and Yale University. The Forum's annual budget for fiscal year 2019 was $1.6 million. [3]
Forum members pay annual dues that are used to fund networking and informational services, such as the Forum's website and bimonthly newsletter, Sounding Board. The Forum also funds national and local commissioning projects, as well as offers programs for individual composers and performers of new music. These projects and programs are funded by grants from government agencies, corporate and private foundations, and individual contributions.
Current Forum programs include Continental Harmony, a national, community-based commissioning program; Faith Partners, a residency program that pairs multiple communities of faith with a composer of their choice; BandQuest, a program that supports the creation of new work for middle-level concert bands by contemporary composers such as Michael Colgrass, Michael Daugherty, Jennifer Higdon, Tania Léon, and Gunther Schuller; Composers Datebook, a daily two-minute radio program about contemporary composers in the context of classical music history; and Innova Recordings, [4] a record label that issues more than two dozen releases of new music each year. In cooperation with the American Music Center and the Minnesota Orchestra, the Forum also offers the annual Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, a week-long series of professional workshops and career seminars for new composers, culminating in a public concert of their works performed by the Minnesota Orchestra and its music director at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis.
In 2006 the Forum launched, with the Ford Foundation, the First Nations Composer Initiative (FNCI), an organization working to promote new music by Native American composers. Based in Saint Paul, the program aims to establish a national infrastructure for American Indian composers and performers, and promote the artists in both Native and non-Native communities. [5]
Its program director is Georgia Wettlin-Larsen, and its advisors include Louis W. Ballard (deceased), Sharon Burch, Raven Chacon, Brent Michael Davids, Joy Harjo, Jennifer E. Kreisberg, R. Carlos Nakai, Joanne Shenandoah, Dawn Avery, and Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate.
The organization sponsors the Composer Apprentice National Outreach Endeavor (CANOE), which teaches American Indian young people to compose their own concert music. It also supported the North American Indian Cello Project commissioning and supporting performances of composers including Brent Michael Davids, Raven Chacon, Tim Archambault, Ron Warren, R. Carlos Nakai, Dawn Avery, Louis W. Ballard, and Tio Becenti.
The San Francisco Symphony (SFS), founded in 1911, is an American orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980 the orchestra has been resident at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in the city's Hayes Valley neighborhood. The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus (1972) are part of the organization. Michael Tilson Thomas became the orchestra's music director in 1995, and concluded his tenure in 2020 when Esa-Pekka Salonen took over the position.
Michael Tilson Thomas is an American conductor, pianist and composer. He is Artistic Director Laureate of the New World Symphony, an American orchestral academy based in Miami Beach, Florida, Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, and Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra.
David Conte is an American composer who has written over 150 works published by E.C. Schirmer, including six operas, a musical, works for chorus, solo voice, orchestra, chamber music, organ, piano, guitar, and harp. Conte has received commissions from Chanticleer, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Harvard University Chorus, the Men’s Glee Clubs of Cornell University and the University of Notre Dame, GALA Choruses from the cities of San Francisco, New York, Boston, Atlanta, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., the Dayton Philharmonic, the Oakland Symphony, the Stockton Symphony, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra, the American Guild of Organists, Sonoma City Opera, and the Gerbode Foundation. He was honored with the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) Brock Commission in 2007 for his work The Nine Muses, and in 2016 he won the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Art Song Composition Award for his work American Death Ballads.
New Mexico is a state of the Southwest United States. The state has music traditions dating back to the ancient Anasazi and Pueblo people, Navajo, Apache, and the Spanish Santa Fe de Nuevo México; these old traditions are found in both their original folk forms and as a modern folk genre known as New Mexico music.
Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate is a Chickasaw classical composer and pianist. His compositions are inspired by North American Indian history, culture and ethos.
Other Minds is an American nonprofit organization based in San Francisco. It was founded In 1992 by Charles Amirkhanian and Jim Newman. According to their mission statement, the organization is dedicated to the "encouragement and propagation of contemporary music."
Christopher Chapman Rouse III was an American composer. Though he wrote for various ensembles, Rouse is primarily known for his orchestral compositions, including a Requiem, a dozen concertos, and six symphonies. His work received numerous accolades, including the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award, the Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He also served as the composer-in-residence for the New York Philharmonic from 2012 to 2015.
Innova Recordings is the independent record label of the non-profit American Composers Forum based in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was founded in 1982 to document the winners of the McKnight Fellowship offered by its parent organization, the Minnesota Composers Forum.
Kevin Matthew Puts is an American composer, best known for winning a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for his first opera, Silent Night.
Elizabeth Brown Larsen is a contemporary American classical composer. Along with composer Stephen Paulus, she is a co-founder of the Minnesota Composers Forum, now the American Composers Forum.
Timothy Archambault is a Native American flutist, architect, and composer.
David Alan Miller is a multi-Grammy Award-winning American symphony orchestra conductor, and since 1992, music director of the Albany Symphony Orchestra. Miller served as assistant and associate conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1987–92 and music director of the New York Youth Symphony from 1982-88. He is currently also Artistic Advisor to The Little Orchestra Society in New York City.
The League of American Orchestras, formerly the American Symphony Orchestra League, is a North American service organization with 700 member orchestras of all budget sizes and types, plus individual and institutional members. Based in New York City, with an office in Washington, DC, the League leads, serves, and advocates for orchestras and the orchestral art form.
The New Century Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1992 by cellist, Miriam Perkoff, and violist, Wieslaw Pogorzelski. The goal of the founders was to present classical music in a fresh and unique way in the San Francisco Bay Area. The music director chooses the programs and guides the artistic vision and leads the seventeen members of the orchestra as part of a conductorless orchestra. Musical decisions are made collaboratively, in the goal of enhancing the level of commitment on the part of the musicians and increasing the precision, passion and power of their playing.
Dawn Avery is a composer, cellist, vocalist and educator. Avery has worked with a range of musicians and is active in both language and cultural preservation as a musician and professor. Avery contributes to the preservation of musical culture by leading workshops and participating in traditional ceremonies. Described as part of a "dramatic increase" in American Indian art music in the 1990s, her own music spans from traditional Mohawk and classical music, including orchestral music, to non-art genres such as downtempo. She is number three on Hirschfelder and Molin's "Thirteen Native Classical Musicians" list.
Steven Alvarez is a Mescalero Apache and Yaqui vocalist, percussionist, film and stage producer.
The Windsor Symphony Orchestra is a Canadian orchestra located in Windsor, Ontario. The orchestra performs in Southwestern Ontario, playing both classical and popular music.
Marsha Eve Mabrey is an African American conductor and educator. She was the first African American woman to be appointed and serve as the conductor of the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra.
Delta David Gier is an American conductor. Gier is Music Director of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, following 15 seasons with the New York Philharmonic as an assistant conductor. He has directed most major orchestras in the United States and has worked extensively with orchestras across Central and South America, Europe, and Asia.