About OMI


About OMI

Founded in 1986 by the husband-and-wife team of Steven and Olga Immel, OMI is now regarded by music & art libraries, scholars and musicians as the pre-eminent source for facsimile editions. OMI is the only US company specializing in facsimiles. It represents and distributes publications produced by all European and American facsimile publishers.

The Immels met while graduate students in the music department at New York University. Before starting the company in 1986, they spent a year researching the availability of facsimile works. This research began in the music field and has gradually expanded to include other disciplines. The Immels' 36 years of involvement with facsimiles has produced a computer database with more than 9,000 entries—a specialized bibliographic resource second to none.


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Steven and Olga Immel

Photo by Camila Motta and Barry Ellsworth

“Handwritings of the departed are like illuminated windows in the night of the past. It is in the manuscript, if anywhere, that something tangible of the corporeal-spiritual being of their authors confronts us. We look over their shoulder, so to speak, and take part in their revelations, their troubles, their joys.”

Wolfgang Schmieder, Musikerhandschriften in drei Jahrhunderten. Ein Bilderquerschnitt durch die deutsche Musikgeschichte von Bach bis Reger (Leipzig, 1939), translation by J. Rigbie Turner