Founded in 1963, Jeunesses Musicales Macedonia continues to be the only national NGO that works with young musicians and young people, developing their creativity and supporting their initial public promotion in the field of music. JMM strives to encourage and match the need for direct communication between the young people and the audience in general with music and with the other cultural values as well. Created on artistic and pedagogical basis, JMM integrates young people regardless of political, religious, national or language background, pleading for generations of young people who will have cosmopolitan, humanistic approaches in their own individual and global creation and development.
Created 50 years ago, JMM has proven those principles with more than 7.000 organized manifestations and concerts, gathering more than thousand artists as soloists and more than 7.000 participants and program animators in various ensembles, followed by more than one million visitors as audience, mostly young people. This makes JMM one of the biggest cultural movements in Republic of Macedonia.
The first local Jeunesses Musicales organization was founded in the town of Bitola in 1963, its President being the young pianist Milica Sperovic. The national JMM organization was founded in Skopje, on January 31st 1964, its first President being Dragoslav Ortakov, composer and musicologist. The main activities of JMM since its foundation to date continue to be:
- concert organizing and promotion of young musicians
- youth school concerts, organized in the schools and universities, cultural centres, museums, cinema halls - with carefully selected music according to the animation needs and followed by professional comments by animators and professors;
- cooperation with the Macedonian Opera and the Macedonian Philharmonic;
- music poetry evenings oriented towards the high school student as audience;
- live music lectures with subjects in classical music, jazz and ethno;
- master classes with prominent local and international professors;
- music competitions
- summer music camp for young musicians with a session of the Chamber orchestra of the JMM
- training courses for: youth management in culture, international cooperation and development of international cooperation networks, audience develompent;
- symphonic concerts for children in cooperation with the Macedonian Philharmonic.
In the last 15 years a special effort has been placed upon the JMM Production, thus making stronger relations between the young performers and the wider audience. A very important part of the influence of JMM also are the cultural management and international cooperation and networking training courses, organized in cooperation with ECF.