American Composers Forum

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The American Composers Forum is an American membership organization dedicated to the promotion and assistance of American composers and their music. It was founded in 1973 as the Minnesota Composers Forum and is based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States.

The American Composers Forum is one of the leading and most enterprising composer service organizations in the United States. The Forum was founded as the Minnesota Composers Forum in 1973 by a group of University of Minnesota graduate students — including Libby Larsen and Stephen Paulus — with a $400 grant from the University’s Student Club Activities Fund. During its 34-year history, the Forum has grown into an organization with a multi-million dollar budget and a national sphere of influence. Its mission is to connect composers with communities and to encourage the making, playing, and enjoyment of new music.

Today, the Forum acts as the umbrella national organization for five locally funded chapters in Minnesota: [1] (based in Saint Paul), New England[2](based in Boston), Washington, D.C.[3], Philadelphia[4], and the San Francisco Bay Area[5], in addition to volunteer-led chapters in New York City[6] and Los Angeles[7].

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.[8] The Forum also funds national and local commissioning projects, as well as performance and career-advancement programs for individual composers and performers. These projects and programs are funded by grants from government agencies, corporate and private foundations, and individual contributions.

Current Forum programs include Continental Harmony,[9], the first national commissioning program in United States history; Faith Partners,[10] a residency program that pairs multiple communities of faith with a composer of their choice; BandQuest®,[11] a program that supports the creation of new work for middle-level concert bands by outstanding contemporary composers; Composers Datebook®,[12], a daily two-minute radio feature integrating contemporary composers into the continuum of classical music history; and Innova Recordings, a compact disc label that issues more than two dozen releases of new music each year.

2006 also saw the launch of the Forum's First Nations Composer Initiative [13], developed in partnership with the Ford Foundation. This program aims to establish a national infrastructure for American Indian composers and performers, increase the visibility of these artists in both Native and non-Native communities, and create new opportunities for their work.