2023 marks the 30th anniversary of the Baltimore Composers Forum. We had decided to celebrate this achievement by collaborating with local artists from Baltimore, and do something we have never done before: create the project-based “traveling” productions which have subsequently led us to the establishment of the 3State Concert Series, between Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.)
The first project in this series is Let It Be Said, the spoken word performance for which we have commissioned author Miesha Lowery. The “spoken word” is a crossover of artistic expression that can be found somewhere between concert and theater, and in words of the writer it is, “a mixed bag of ingredients, a sprinkle of mundane, a tablespoon of thoughtfulness, a dash of wisdom, a teaspoon of love, and a quarter of a cup of the daily grind. I created a realistic short story broken up into spoken words, and the Baltimore Composers Forum brought it to life from their inspiration. Let It Be Said is the epitome of fleeting thoughts, moments, and whispered feelings.”
Our second project is Intersegmenal 38, our collaboration with visual artist Mina Cheon by drawing inspiration from her work Dreaming Unification: Protest Peace and its 17 flags. Word intersegmental, i.e. occurring between or involving two or more segments, is mostly used in medicine to describe spinal segments, and was befitting our idea of “prompting the unity” and connecting two separate parts. The 38th parallel, which runs through Maryland as well, is the official border between North and South Korea but can be understood as any boundary between territories where the conflict exists, and unfortunately the current global happenings provide plenty of examples. The unification flags are figures, and they are raised high and in line, like a procession of a parade. Each flag painting is a symbolic new figuration, a body that parades in a procession for peace and poses as figures floating in space, as a means of protest.
The third project is Sound in Motion VII, an ongoing collaboration with Maryland-based dancers and choreographers Molly Jean Kirkup Heer, Alice Howes and Adrienne Kraus Latanishen. This seventh installment themed “connectedness” will also feature Virginia based clarinetist Katie Repka and harpist Ljubica Sekulić from Serbia/Sweden. Commissioned composers include Ljiljana Becker, Gavin Brown, Stephan J. Carlson, Ray Fields, Steven P. James, Keith Kramer, Janice Macaulay, Jonathan Newmark, Ian Rashkin and Anna Rubin.
Looking back at the first two seasons of this concert series, Thus Far presents a curated selection of texts and music compositions from the Let It Be Said and Intersegmental 38 projects, featuring text by Baltimore-based author Miesha Lowery, and Mohammad Rohaizad Suaidi, narrator, Ji Eun Kim, soprano, Soyeun Jung, gayageum, Youngik Jang, guitar and Bonghee Lee, piano. Music compositions include wotks of Anna Rubin, Ian Rashkin, Janice Macaulay, Keith Kramer, Gavin Brown and Ljiljana Becker.