What began as direct work alongside community music programs across four continents has evolved into something larger: a platform built to connect, resource, and amplify a field that is already changing lives through music.
Community music programs around the world are doing remarkable work. They are building youth orchestras in neighborhoods that have never had one, running after-school programs that keep young people connected to something meaningful, creating spaces where music becomes a pathway to confidence, belonging, and possibility. This work is real, it is proven, and it is happening on every continent.
Teaching Artists International grew out of direct experience alongside those programs — in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America — learning from the educators who built them and the communities they serve. The more that work deepened, the clearer a larger opportunity came into view: what if these programs could find each other? What if the knowledge, relationships, and momentum being built in one corner of the world could benefit programs everywhere?
"Music has to be recognized as an agent of social development in the highest sense, because it transmits the highest values — solidarity, harmony, mutual compassion. And it has the ability to unite an entire community and to express sublime feelings."— José Antonio Abreu, Founder of El Sistema
In Concert is the answer to that question. Not a replacement for the teaching artist work — that continues through TAI Fellows — but an expansion of what becomes possible when programs are connected, visible, and supported as part of something larger than any one of them. The Opus Network is the connective tissue this field has been building toward.
In Concert is built on years of direct partnership with community music programs across four continents — work carried out under our founding name, Teaching Artists International. That history is the foundation of everything we're building now.
Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia
eSwatini, Democratic Republic of Congo
Peru (2 cohorts), Guatemala (2 cohorts), Costa Rica
That direct field experience — working inside programs, alongside educators, in communities across four continents — is what In Concert is built on. We know this work from the inside. The Opus Network is the next step — turning those relationships and that knowledge into lasting support for the programs that need it most.
Founding membership in the Opus Network is open now — at no cost to your program.
Become a Founding Member