African Diaspora Music Project launches free orchestral resource to promote diversity

ADMP was launched in 2019 by Dr Louise Toppin, a professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance. Toppin has spent several decades researching and consolidating vocal works by African Diaspora composers. The database currently offers nearly 4,000 songs by composers of African descent.

In 2020, when conductor James Blachly approached Toppin with the possibility of adding an orchestral component to the site, she jumped at the opportunity: ‘When James reached out to me I realised that this was the right moment and the right collaborative partner to move the database into phase II.  We hope that this iteration provides an even better user experience for those researching both vocal and orchestral repertoire.  Together James and I hope that we can help transform the experience of musicians interested in incorporating the work of African Diaspora composers.’

Now associate editor of ADMP, James Blachly says: ‘With 1,200 entries so far, we expect this resource to help people programme with far greater breadth than they would doing their own research with limited time.  We want this to be a resource that represents our ongoing efforts as a field, and for musicians, historians, orchestras, conductors, artistic administrators, and others to continually update it with new recordings and listings as our collective knowledge and research continues to expand.’

Toppin added: ‘As artists increasingly look to diversify their programming, they are faced with unexpected challenges. While living composers often update their websites, many pieces by previous generations of African Diaspora composers are not published, and it takes hours of research to find publisher information for others. This is compounded by a lack of performance history for many pieces, which have been historically underperformed, have been neglected for decades, or were never premiered.’

The ADMP database is free to use and is designed with conductors and artistic administrators in mind, making it extremely user-friendly. Users can search by ensemble size and length of work, allowing them to find many pieces for their programming needs, and with perusal PDFs of scores and recordings provided whenever possible.

africandiasporamusicproject.org/