Welcome to Burning River Baroque’s Living Poetry Project!
This database is aimed at facilitating easy collaboration between living composers and poets by providing a space for poets to share their unpublished work and for composers to easily access contemporary poetry for use in creating new musical works. Our Living Poetry Project is meant to eliminate barriers to access for both poets and composers. Poets have a platform to easily share their work with the world, and composers have a large repository of contemporary texts to search for use in their compositions. Rather than waiting months to obtain permission to use poetry in published collections, composers will be provided the contact information for each poet to negotiate arrangements for the use of the text in musical works.
Poems may be uploaded in PDF (visual) or mp3 (audio) format and the author may select various identifying tags for themselves and the subject matter of the poems. Composers may then search the site using these identifying tags. It is imperative that all parties adhere to the guidelines for participating in this community. Poets need to verify that the poem(s) they have uploaded are their own creative work, and therefore they have full permission to share them and that they do not hold Burning River Baroque or Living Poetry Project responsible for any misuse of their work that may occur. Composers must verify that they will contact the poet and come to a clear agreement about text rights and usage before using any text that they find on this site. If the poet does not agree to their use of the text, they must promise to cease and desist all contact with them and use of their intellectual property.
If you have questions that are not answered on our FAQ page, please email directors@burning-river-baroque.org.
We look forward to featuring your poet/composer collaborative projects on this site and on Burning River Baroque’s social media accounts, so please keep in touch about your work!
Burning River Baroque brings diverse communities together through vibrant musical performances that inspire engaging dialogues and meaningful social change. Their cutting-edge programs bring the vitality of baroque music to life for contemporary audiences by demonstrating the profound connections between issues of the past and those of modern times. By offering most concerts for free and by donation and performing in a wide array of venues, they reach the broadest possible audience base in Ohio and beyond. To further fuse together ideas of the past and present and demonstrate the profound connections between issues of the past and present, they commission a new composition each season.
Praised by the Boston Musical Intelligencer as a group that “left an indelible imprint on my psyche,” Cleveland-based Burning River Baroque is an innovative artist-run ensemble focused on presenting cutting-edge programs about issues at the forefront of contemporary thought. Inspired by the environmental reform that occurred after the Cuyahoga River burned, they throw open the doors of the concert hall to all by performing in diverse venues and offering most concerts for free. From rural churches and libraries to urban warehouses and everywhere in between, they make regular appearances across Ohio and bring the drama, passion, and vitality of baroque music to life for diverse audiences. Each year they further fuse together the past and present by commissioning a new composition to create programming that is fresh and relevant to contemporary audiences. With each new season they further their intention of presenting programs that use classical music to reframe and engage with current reality, rather than using it as a privileged escape from current events.
Core members are Malina Rauschenfels, a Juilliard-educated multi-instrumentalist and composer, and Dr. Paula Maust, a CIM and Peabody-trained harpsichordist, organist, and scholar. Since its formation in 2012, Burning River Baroque has put on an average of 15-20 concerts each season. Last season’s concerts, “Destructive Desires” and “The Other Side of the Story,” addressed issues raised by the #MeToo Movement. The 2019-2020 season focuses on unconventional 17th-century women and includes “A Mad, Burning Desire” and “Witches: Revered and Reviled.” Each year they form partnerships with local organizations whose missions align with their concert programming. This year’s collaborations will include Bard High School Early College, songwriting workshops at the Renee Jones Empowerment Center, and a concert at the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick.
DeBorah McCreath is a published poet, certified Laughter Yoga Leader, licensed minister, and Reiki Level II practitioner. As a trained voice-over artist, she can be heard on Blog Talk Radio and Cleveland Independent Films. Her wide-ranging life experiences include military service and working as a model for David and Lee Model Management. Additionally, she has volunteered with AirsLA.org, a non-profit organization for the visually impaired, and used her platform as the reigning Miss Wheelchair Ohio in 1997 to advocate for persons with disabilities. Today she records audio books and assists with social media management for independent artists. DeBorah is a married mother of five children who homeschooled her youngest for 14 years. She is on the Burning River Baroque board, she will be helping give birth to the new “Living Poetry Project.”
Dr. Paula Maust is a performer-scholar dedicated to fusing research and creative practice to amplify underrepresented voices and advocate for social change. She is the creator of Expanding the Music Theory Canon, an extensive open-source collection of music theory examples by women and BIPoC composers. As a harpsichordist and organist, she has been praised for combining “great power with masterful subtlety” (DC Metro Theater Arts) and as a “refined and elegant performer” (Boston Musical Intelligencer). In her work as a co-director of Burning River Baroque and Musica Spira, she curates edgy lecture-concerts connecting baroque music to contemporary social issues. She is currently working on a recording of Elizabeth Turner’s 1756 Six Lessons for Harpsichord.
Paula teaches music theory, music history, keyboard skills, harpsichord, organ, piano, and coaches students in the Collegium Musicum at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, County; the Johns Hopkins University; and Peabody Conservatory. Her current book project, The Ugly Virtuosa, examines the pejorative language used to describe the first generation of professional female musicians in England, Italy, and France. She has presented her research for the American Musicological Society, the Indiana University Historical Performance Institute, the American Handel Society, and the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music. https://www.paulamaust.com/
Composer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Malina Rauschenfels performs extensively as both a chamber musician and soloist, with a strong emphasis on early and very contemporary music. Malina is co-director and a founding member of Burning River Baroque, where she sings and plays baroque cello and violin. She is also artistic director of hūmAnómali, a collaboratively structured music ensemble that incorporates “extra-musical affairs” inspired by dance, gesture, and theatricality into its historically informed performances of music from antiquity to the present.
As a composition major at Eastman School of Music, she always dreamed of a way to connect with living poets so she could set relevant text about current pressing issues. This website is finally her dream turned reality. www.malinarauschenfels.com