Anne Harrigan, founding music director of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, will step down from the podium in 2004.

She will conduct the ensemble's 20th anniversary season (2002-2003) as scheduled, and continue as music director the following season, when candidates for the job will guest-conduct most of the concerts.

"I've been thinking about doing this for a couple of years," Harrigan said from her home in Grand Rapids, Mich.

"My daughter is going into kindergarten in the fall, and I decided it's time to devote more time and energy to my family. When you have a kid in school, you just can't pick them up and drag them around with you."

A graduate of Peabody Institute and the Yale School of Music, Harrigan launched the BCO in 1984. She has been commuting from Grand Rapids, where her husband is a cancer researcher, to Baltimore for concerts since 1999.

"Anne put together a really good orchestra from scratch and intended to take it as far as she could," said the BCO's orchestra administrator Ted Jones, a member of the original trumpet section and a classmate of Harrigan's at Peabody.

"We played our first concert in a church. Musicians agreed to split the take; I think we got $5 each. Anne brought the orchestra along single-handedly in the beginning. She's remarkable."

The 40-member BCO, which played to sold-out houses at Goucher College's Kraushaar Auditorium this season, has a subscriber base of about 600 and an annual budget of more than $400,000. The ensemble uses members of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and free-lance musicians in the region.

A search committee is being formed to select candidates for new music director.

"The committee will include some orchestra and board members," said Jeffrey Penza, who will head the search. "We will also try to draw from the community at large. We hope to have a short list of candidates within the next few months. I think this is a real opportunity for us."

In 1994, Harrigan became music director of a second ensemble, the Lafayette Symphony in Indiana. She plans to continue in that job. As for the BCO, the conductor is upbeat.

"It is a good time for the orchestra," she said. "It is at a position where it's going to continue to grow. It will be fun for me to see what happens."

Jones expects Harrigan "to keep her hand in" after her tenure ends. She agrees.

"I'll still be around," she said, "begging people for money."