To reach the highest standards of instrumental performance, several years of sustained and focused learning are required. This requires perseverance, commitment and opportunities to learn and practise, often in a collective musical environment. This book brings together a wide range of enlightening current psychological and educational research to offer deeper insights into the mosaic of factors and related experiences that combine to nurture (and sometimes hinder) advanced musical performance. Each of the book's four sections focus on one aspect of music performance and learning: musics in higher education and beyond; musical journeys and educational reflections; performance learning; and developing expertise and professionalism. Although each chapter within its home section offers a particular focus, there is an underlying conception across all the book’s contents of the achievability of advanced musical performance and of the important nurturing role that higher education can play, particularly if policy and practice are evidence-based and draw on the latest international research findings. The narrative offers an insight into the world of advanced musicians, detailing their learning journeys and the processes involved in their quest for the development of expertise and professionalism. It is the first book of its kind to consider performance learning in higher education across a variety of musical genres, including classical, jazz, popular and folk musics. The editors have invited an international community of leading scholars and performance practitioners to contribute to this publication, which draws on meticulous research and critical practice. This collection is an essential resource for all musicians, educators, researchers and policy makers who share our interest in promoting the development of advanced performance skills and professionalism.

To reach the highest standards of instrumental performance, several years of sustained and focused learning are required. This requires perseverance, commitment and opportunities to learn and practise, often in a collective musical environment. This book brings together a wide range of enlightening current psychological and educational research to offer deeper insights into the mosaic of factors and related experiences that combine to nurture (and sometimes hinder) advanced musical performance. Each of the book's four sections focus on one aspect of music performance and learning: musics in higher education and beyond; musical journeys and educational reflections; performance learning; and developing expertise and professionalism. Although each chapter within its home section offers a particular focus, there is an underlying conception across all the book’s contents of the achievability of advanced musical performance and of the important nurturing role that higher education can play, particularly if policy and practice are evidence-based and draw on the latest international research findings. The narrative offers an insight into the world of advanced musicians, detailing their learning journeys and the processes involved in their quest for the development of expertise and professionalism. It is the first book of its kind to consider performance learning in higher education across a variety of musical genres, including classical, jazz, popular and folk musics. The editors have invited an international community of leading scholars and performance practitioners to contribute to this publication, which draws on meticulous research and critical practice. This collection is an essential resource for all musicians, educators, researchers and policy makers who share our interest in promoting the development of advanced performance skills and professionalism.

Higher Music Performance Education, as taught and learned in universities and conservatoires in Europe, is undergoing transformation. Since the nineteenth century, the master-apprentice pedagogical model has dominated, creating a learning environment that emphasises the development of technical skills rather than critical and creative faculties. This book contributes to the renewal of this field by being the first to address the potential of artistic research in developing student-centred approaches and greater student autonomy. This potential is demonstrated in chapters illustrating artistic research projects that are embedded within higher music education courses across Europe, with examples ranging from instrumental tuition and ensemble work to the development of professional employability skills and inclusive practices. Bringing together diverse and experienced voices working within Higher Music Education but often also as professional performers, this edited collection pairs critical reflection with artistic insight to present new approaches to curricula for teaching interpretation and performance. It calls for greater collaboration between Higher Education and professional music institutions to create closer bonds with music industries and, thereby, improve students’ career opportunities. Teaching Music Performance in Higher Education will appeal to scholars, performers, teachers, but also students whose interests centre on innovative practices in conservatoires and music departments.

Desired Artistic Outcomes in Music Performance is about empowering musicians to achieve their professional and personal goals in music. The narrative argues that developing musicians should be supported in conceptualizing and achieving their desired artistic outcomes (DAO), as these have been recognized as key elements in a successful career transition in and beyond their studies in higher education. The text explores the nature of DAO and illustrates how higher education students can be enabled to explore and develop these. The book draws on the findings from a range of exploratory studies which: Bring to light connections between contemporary topics in music, such as artistic research and career development; Contribute to existing discussions on innovative pedagogical approaches in higher education in music; and Offer theoretical models to support the broad artistic and professional development in young musicians. This is a text grounded in theory and practice, and which draws on case study examples, as well as historical perspectives and coverage of contemporary issues regarding employment in the music industries. The book will be of particular interest to aspiring music professionals and all those working in the areas of Music Education, Performance Studies and Artistic Research.

Commercial and Popular Music in Higher Education brings together working examples of pedagogy in emerging areas of popular and commercial music to offer practical insights and provide a theoretical framework for today’s music educators. Written by a diverse group of experts, the eight chapters address a range of contemporary contexts, including digital instrument ensembles, digital audio workstations, hip hop courses, pop vocal performance, rock bands, studio production, and more. Considering both the challenges and the benefits of integrating commercial and popular music into teaching, the contributors explore how doing so can enhance student learning. The authors show how a constructivist approach to music pedagogy enables student-led, real-world learning in higher education, and consider how diversity, equity, and inclusion intersect with teaching popular music performance. Compiling experiences and expert resources, this book provides a vital framework for all instructors teaching commercial and popular music.

This edited volume explores how selected researchers, students and academics name and frame creative teaching and learning as constructed through the rationalities, practices, relationships, events, objects and systems that are brought to educational sites and developed by learning communities. The concept of creative learning questions the starting-points and opens up the outcomes of curriculum, and this frames creative teaching not only as a process of learning but as an agent of change. Within the book, the various creativities that are valued by different stakeholders teaching and studying in the higher music sector are delineated, and processes and understandings of creative teaching are articulated, both generally in higher music education and specifically through their application within the design of individual modules. This focus makes the text relevant to scholars, researchers and practitioners across many fields of music, including those working in musicology, composition, performance, music education, and music psychology. The book contributes new perspectives on our understanding of the role of creative teaching and learning and processes in creative teaching across the domain of music learning in higher music education sectors.

The two-volume 'Oxford Handbook of Music Performance' provides the most comprehensive and authoritative resource for musicians, educators and scholars currently available. It is aimed primarily for practicing musicians, particularly those who are preparing for a professional career as performers and are interested in practical implications of psychological and scientific research for their own music performance development; educators with a specific interest or expertise in music psychology, who will wish to apply the concepts and techniques surveyed in their own teaching; undergraduate and postgraduate students who understand the potential of music psychology for informing music education; and researchers in the area of music performance who consider it important for the results of their research to be practically useful for musicians and music educators.

Aural Education: Reconceptualising Ear Training in Higher Music Learning explores the practice of musical ‘aural training’ from historical, pedagogical, psychological, musicological, and cultural perspectives, and uses these to draw implications for its pedagogy, particularly within the context of higher music education. The multi-perspective approach adopted by the author affords a broader and deeper understanding of this branch of music education, and of how humans relate to music more generally. The book extracts and examines one by one different parameters that appear central to ‘aural training’, proceeding in a gradual and well-organised way, while at the same time constantly highlighting the multiple interconnections and organic unity of the many different operations that take place when we interact with music through any music-related activity. The resulting complex profile of the nature of our relationship with music, combined with an exploration of non-Western cultural perspectives, offer fresh insights on issues relating to musical ‘aural training’. Emerging implications are proposed in the form of broad pedagogical principles, applicable in a variety of different music educational settings. Andrianopoulou propounds a holistic alternative to ‘aural training’, which acknowledges the richness of our relationship to music and is rooted in absorbed aural experience. The book is a key contribution to the existing literature on aural education, designed with researchers and educators in mind.

Popular music is a growing presence in education, formal and otherwise, from primary school to postgraduate study. Programmes, courses and modules in popular music studies, popular music performance, songwriting and areas of music technology are becoming commonplace across higher education. Additionally, specialist pop/rock/jazz graded exam syllabi, such as RockSchool and Trinity Rock and Pop, have emerged in recent years, meaning that it is now possible for school leavers in some countries to meet university entry requirements having studied only popular music. In the context of teacher education, classroom teachers and music-specialists alike are becoming increasingly empowered to introduce popular music into their classrooms. At present, research in Popular Music Education lies at the fringes of the fields of music education, ethnomusicology, community music, cultural studies and popular music studies. The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music Education is the first book-length publication that brings together a diverse range of scholarship in this emerging field. Perspectives include the historical, sociological, pedagogical, musicological, axiological, reflexive, critical, philosophical and ideological.