About Us

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.

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. 

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. 

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.