American Composers Forum: Chicago

CHICAGO CHAPTER: About

Founded: April 1996

The Chicago Chapter's mission is two-fold:

to make the greater Chicago area a better place to live by enhancing through music the services of community organizations. Composers and musicians make community programs more meaningful and enduring by investing them with an added creative and expressive dimension. The Chapter seeks to form a core group of on-going partnerships with a wide variety of excellent community organizations.
to serve the needs of composers and performers by facilitating meetings, workshops and concerts where they can meet among themselves and with new audiences, and by forging links between musicians and not-for-profit organizations. Artists earn fees for their creative work while supporting worthy organizational goals and programs. Invariably, such community engagement initiatives feature performances of new work produced by musicians in the course of the projects.

During the past year, in projects whose audiences ranged from a hundred to two thousand, the chapter has, in partnership with the Jazz institute and the Chicago Park District, partially underwritten a composer's musical protrait and celebration of Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood; it has initiated a 2-3 year partnership with Duncan YMCA and the University of Illinois-Chicago in which area composers will write the music for 3 originial dance dramas; it has completed the first year of on-going composer residencies at Noble Street School at Northwestern University Settlement, and Lathrop Community Music Center; it has underwritten original compositions for a series of "performable art" workshops in partnership with CUBE and the Chicago Children's Museum; a steering committee of composers, performers and advisors juried and organized a four-concert series of new music by area composers at a Chicago Park District Cultural Center.

Like all other ACF Chapters, the Chicago Chapter's work has inspired an ever-increasing number of composers, performers and community organizations of various kinds to seek its help and support.

The Chapter serves the greater Chicago area, all of Illinois, southern Wisconsin and northern Indiana.

The Chicago Chapter is funded in part through the generous support of:
Chicago Community Trust
City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, City Arts I Program
D & Z House of Books, Inc.
Illinois Arts Council, a state agency
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Marshall Field Foundation - Project Imagine
Polk Bros. Foundation
The Helen F. Whitaker Fund
WPWR-TV Channel 50 Foundation

CHICAGO CHAPTER BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Tom Buckley, audio-video technician, President, Prairie Fire Media
Michael Burritt, Professor of Music, Northwestern University
Maria R. Rodriquez, IT Dept., Shepard, Schwartz & Harris
Stacy Garrop, Professor of Music, Roosevelt University
Rochelle Gordon, Supervising Attorney of Labor Law Division, Chicago Board of Education
Bob Peskin, Director of Chapters, American Composers Forum
Christopher Preissing, composer, graphic designer at C. G. Jung Institute
Marta Ptaszynska, Professor of Music Composition, University of Chicago
Augusta Read Thomas, Professor of Music, Northwestern University
Matias Tarnopolsky, Director of Programming, Symphony Center Present, Chicago Symphony Orchestra

CHICAGO CHAPTER ADVISORY COUNCIL
Shawn Decker, Head, Art & Technology Department, The School of the Art Institute
Lauren Deutsch, Director, The Jazz Institute of Chicago
Rich Gage, Director of Development, Chicago Sinfonietta
Bruce Gannaway, CPA, Shepard, Schwartz & Harris
Peter Gena, Head, Music & Technology Dept., The School of the Art Institute
Lita Grier, Board Member, American Women Composers
Amy Iwano, Director, Chicago Chamber Musicians
Jeanette Kreston, Director, Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra
Lisel Mueller, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
James Palermo, Director, Grant Park Music Festival
Paulette Roeske, Professor of Creative Writing, College of Lake County
Sarah Solotaroff, Senior Staff Associate, Chicago Community Trust
Michael Thomas, attorney
Erma Tranter, Director, Friends of the Parks
Nick Yasillo, Director, Norton Concert Series (Lockport, Ill.)
Ex-officio: Cheryl Yuen, Sara Lee Foundation

ACF NATIONAL BOARD MEMBER
To Be Announced

Active Members: 102

Paula Giannini, Director • Ami Saraiya, Assistant Director
American Composers Forum - Chicago Chapter
410 South Michigan Avenue, Suite 943
Chicago, Illinois 60605

(312) 922-6311
fax (312) 922-6314
staff@chicagocomposers.org