Baker Artist Portfolios

I started writing songs and playing guitar when I was seven years old. I recorded my first songs on a cassette boombox with a built in microphone. During this time I was also a big hit with the elementary school "show and tell" circuit.

Puppet Games was my first album, released on cassette in 1998 when I was sixteen. It was inspired by my friends, and my increasing interest in psychedelic consciousness, mysticism, and electronic music. The songs range from gothic-industrial ballads to experimental psychedelic excursions. The music was recorded in my parents' basement on a four-track cassette machine using a desktop computer, acoustic and electric guitars, a mandolin, a yamaha keyboard, random objects, a CD of bird sounds, and an effects processor.

I met Keith Jones at an open mic in Ellicott City. He was playing his original songs and doing acoustic covers of 1960s psyche classics. We immediately hit it off and discovered that we loved many of the same bands. Our first performance together was a cover of The Count Five's "Psychotic Reaction," on acoustic guitars in front of an unsuspecting bar crowd. When asked to play the Sowebo Arts Festival later that year, Keith asked me to play lead guitar on some of his songs.

FANTASTIC is a community project created in order to raise more awareness about the rising numbers of HIV infections in Baltimore. The project gives an uplifting view of life through the use of fashion imagery and art put to a happy music track

The Todd Marcus Jazz Orchestra is my nine member ensemble that includes six horns (bass clarinet, alto saxophone/flute, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, trumpet, trombone) along with piano, bass, and drums. This ensemble presents my original compositions and arrangements, jazz standards, and demonstrates my work of presenting the bass clarinet as a legitimate lead horn in modern jazz deserving of equal consideration with more traditional jazz horns like the saxophone and trumpet.

The Todd Marcus Jazz Orchestra is my nine member ensemble that includes six horns (bass clarinet, alto saxophone/flute, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, trumpet, trombone) along with piano, bass, and drums. This ensemble presents my original compositions and arrangements, jazz standards, and demonstrates my work of presenting the bass clarinet as a legitimate lead horn in modern jazz deserving of equal consideration with more traditional jazz horns like the saxophone and trumpet.

I was doing work with a circus theme, including a few pastel drawings on paper I called Escape From Dog Circus.  When my pal, Dave Israel, saw it, he said I should do a children's book. Dave had a two year old, so this sort of thing is on his mind these days. I told him I wasn't much of a writer, or illustrator and had never attempted a narrative series. I'd never attempted any visual/musical art collaboration, either.

the setting sun over the severn river . Annapolis MD. A cold and windy, beautiful day.

A beautiful musical composition creates a beautiful visual. Layered sound from Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances. Dies Irae translates to Day of Wrath and is a rhythmic tool within Rachmaninoff's piece. Crescendo and decrescend fall like rain.