About the Aga Khan Music Programme
The mission of the Aga Khan Music Programme is to foster the development of living musical heritage in societies across the world where Muslims have a significant presence, and disseminate this work internationally through collaborations with exceptionally creative musicians, artists, educators, and arts presenters.
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The Aga Khan Music Programme (AKMP) consolidates all activities of the Aga Khan Music Initiative and Aga Khan Music Awards. In addition to administering the Music Awards, AKMP will assume the former Music Initiative’s leadership role as an innovator in:
- music and arts education
- music commissioning, production, and publication
- musical heritage documentation and revitalisation
Aligning the activities of the Music Initiative and Music Awards under a single umbrella programme creates synergies among projects and people. Laureates of the Music Awards will be incorporated into the music programme’s existing education network. A newly created music publishing arm is managing intellectual property rights for recordings, publications, educational materials, music compositions, and films developed by or featuring educators and artists across AKMP’s areas of activity.
The Aga Khan Music Programme comprises four interrelated programmatic domains:
- Education and Mentoring
- Creation and Performance
- Production, Documentation, and Dissemination
- Online Projects and Digital Archive
To follow on social media:
https://www.facebook.com/AgaKhanMusic
https://www.instagram.com/agakhanmusic/
https://vimeo.com/akmp
https://www.youtube.com/user/agakhanmusic
Aga Khan Music Awards
The triennial Music Awards, established by His Highness the Aga Khan in 2018, recognise exceptional creativity, promise, and enterprise in music performance, creation, education, preservation and revitalisation in societies across the world in which Muslims have a significant presence. The inaugural Music Awards ceremony took place in Lisbon, Portugal from 29-31 March 2019, co-hosted by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Lisbon Municipality. Watch the short film about the creation of Music Awards and the inaugural Music Awards ceremony:
Education and Mentoring
Music education was a core element of the Aga Khan Music Initiative and remains central to AKMP’s efforts to support the revitalisation, further development, and transmission of Muslim musical heritage in contemporary artistic languages inspired but not constrained by tradition.
Creation and Performance
From young school children to aspiring young professionals, venerated master musicians, and laureates of the Aga Khan Music Awards, individual artists, ensembles, and arts communities in the network of the Aga Khan Music Programme are offered opportunities to create and perform music that embodies contemporary perspectives on musical heritage. The music of AKMP’s own performing ensemble, the Aga Khan Master Musicians, is inspired by their deep roots in the cultures of the Middle East and Mediterranean Basin, South Asia, Central Asia, and China. These artists also serve as preeminent teachers, mentors, and curators.
Production, Documentation, and Dissemination
AKMP inherited the Aga Khan Music Initiative’s distinguished portfolio of audio and video recordings, publications, films, and educational materials representing two decades of work by a broad network of specialists. Supported by a new music publishing entity that manages the intellectual property rights of participating artists and educators, AKMP will continue to document, produce, and disseminate the work of outstanding musicians in its regions of activity. Please see : https://vimeo.com/akmp and https://www.youtube.com/user/agakhanmusic.
Online Projects and Digital Archive
From the time of its establishment in 2000, the Music Initiative comprehensively documented its work through audio recording, film and video, photography, and print publications. Only a small percentage of this material has been published or made available online, while much of it remains unseen and unheard. A significant online education project and digital archive currently under development will include a fully searchable subscription-based database consisting of AKMP-owned audio and video assets and a collection of instructional tutorials. Online tutorials will feature a wide array of instructors, instruments, and themes suited to students of different ages and backgrounds, all using innovative lesson-delivery technology that syncs audio, video and music notation into a single interface. Several educational institutions in North America, Europe and Central Asia will test this new educational collection. AKMP’s new music publishing entity will own the rights to the tutorials, allowing for an “open access” policy.