About

The Israel Composers' League

The Israel Composers' League (ICL) was founded in 1953. Its aim is to promote all kinds of contemporary concert music written in Israel, to improve the general welfare of composers living in the country and to bring the knowledge and awareness of music written by Israeli composers to the general public. It functions as the local section of the ISCM (International Society for Contemporary Music) , the ACL (Asian Composers' League) and ECSA (European Composers and Songwriter alliance).

The League directs its main activities to organizing concerts, competitions for composers (young composers in particular), encouragement of young performers playing Israeli music, educational lectures at conservatories and academies of music and cultural exchanges of concerts and lectures with similar organizations in foreign countries. The Israel Composers' League has established its own publishing house ( IMC - Israeli Music Center), which publishes and distributes our members' works. The ICL is also active in producing CDs of Israeli music culminating with the 2003 release of "Psanterin" - an anthology of Israeli piano music of the 20th century.

The board members of ICL are Dr. Shai Cohen (Chairman), John Bostock (Treasurer) and Hadas Goldschmidt Halfon (Secretary).

The Israel Composers' League is a nonprofit organization, supported by the Ministry of Culture and Education, membership fees and contributions.

The Israel Music Center

The Israel Music Center (IMC, or as is generally known in Hebrew - "Mali") is the Israel Composers' League members' publishing house. The ICL was initiated in 1994, by Ari Ben Shabetai – then the chairman of the Israel Composers' League, with the support of the League's management and council. Each council member submitted a composition of his to the new organisation, and ever since then the collection grew to the current number of 4010 registered compositions , composed by 136 Israeli composers. The IMC is unique among publishers of its kind, since it is run directly by the composers themselves, taking care of all compositions created in the country with no need of lectors committees whatsoever, and without even a slight preference of one work or one creator over another.

The IMC was formed as a result of an essential need of Israeli composers who felt that the already existing Israel Music Institute (IMI) did not support their professional needs in a satisfactory manner. The ICL publishes the works, promoting and striving to bring them to performance as much as possible. The IMC also takes care of securing the composers' right to get their share in rental fees of orchestral parts. Since the initiation of the IMC, every Israeli composition has a location – either with the IMC itself or at any other music publisher subject to the composer's preference.

During its first 12 years of operation the IMC was directed by the musicologist Dushan Michalek. Currently it is directed by the ICL chairman, with the help of its employees Efrat Carmush and Ronald Boersen.