Intercultural Music Initiative (IMI) is a consortium of professional musicians, composers, educators, scholars, and administrators with a common mission to perform music by lesser-known composers, particularly of African descent or from other racial minorities. IMI concerts and artist residencies help incorporate familiar, comparative repertoire from pre-Baroque through contemporary music literature. IMI artists lend their professional expertise to advocacy issues relating to music education, and diversity issues and advise how to develop a more culturally inclusive repertoire and music curriculum in schools, colleges, and conservatories. IMI musicians serve as cultural ambassadors through the USA-Africa Artists Exchange, an international outreach of the Intercultural Music Initiative.
Our corps of distinguished performers, composers, scholars, educators, and arts administrators are scheduled in temporary artist residencies with partnering institutions. They specialize in repertoire by African-descent composers, performed along with comparative repertoire from familiar standards. Residencies include joint concerts with students and/or faculty at the host institutions.
The Intercultural Music Initiative program complements and expands the existing body of African-American, African-derived, Africana, and World music. With a wide network of highly qualified presenters, the IMI essentially serves as a 1-stop artists agency of artists/scholars who are committed to promoting new genres of intercultural music. Our consortium of musicians appreciates the honor and the enormous responsibility of serving as a unique resource for a performance-focused, in-depth inquiry into the vast world of music literature by lesser-known composers.
Booking and artist fees are varied and flexible and are determined by the size of the ensemble desired, and length of the concert/residency program, etc.