Music belongs to everyone.

How it all started

Institute for Music Evolution (I.M.E.) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization founded by President Luis McDougal and Vice-President J. Eduardo Muñoz in January 2023. Both founders graduated from Manhattan School of Music where they experienced a vibrant culture centered on musicians’ companionship and critical artistic thinking. An integral motivation for starting I.M.E. was to emulate aspects of this community support for the arts to broader audiences.

Through the organization of concerts, lessons and summer music intensives such as our Sound Birth Festival, I.M.E. reflects on music traditions that are integrated in our everyday life and explores unforeseen possibilities by challenging them. I.M.E. was founded in McAllen, Texas, relying on collaboration with local musicians and art lovers alike while also expanding talent involvement in New York City, where the founders are currently based.

Our mission

The purpose of Institute for Music Evolution (I.M.E.) is to facilitate a culture that values critical artistic thinking, community bonding and mutual development. And, as a consequence, we aim to expand the conception of music that public audiences have. With a team of committed world class musicians, we achieve this through understanding, questioning and challenging traditions along with hierarchies in the art form. Through various platforms such as public concerts, summer festivals, private lessons and volunteering for community improvement, we aim to positively transform ourselves along with our audience.

Our approach

In our concerts, we connect with people so that their experience is not only entertaining, but also introduces a distinct perspective on the possibilities of what music and art can be. Music can be transformative not only to individuals but to communities in a way that cements deeper bonds, trust, and empathy toward one another. We believe that music is such an innate part of the human experience that everyone, regardless of background, has the potential to appreciate, connect and engage with it so that audiences are not merely spectators but play an active role in the art.

Through the exploration of different approaches of composition, improvisation, analysis and unconventional performance practice, our summer programs are centered on the cultivation of students of all levels to unleash their creativity in these areas. Recognizing relationships between art and society can help us gain insight into the structures we live under and envision other possibilities. I.M.E. is designed in such a way that it will continuously improve upon itself through collaboration between world-class artists of all kinds along with rigorous discussions about the philosophy of music that we offer to the world.