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Engaging with new audiences

Music can touch people deeply, and lead to wellbeing as an all-encompassing word for everything that makes life worth living, or at least can make it liveable. Musicians can play an important role in these processes, not as pseudo-therapists, but from their own artistic identity, with an approach in which they profoundly understand the social contexts to which they respond. In essence this is about connecting as a musician with those who, due to whatever circumstances, are vulnerable, and/or those who do not easily get into contact with live music.This requires new qualities and skills from such “new audience musicians” who want to engage with people in contexts beyond the concert hall, jazz club or church, like schools, hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, or e.g. the corporate world.Underpinning engagement with those new audiences is first and foremost a set of values that implies that music can work as a catalyst for communication between various groups of people from different cultural and social contexts, and can bring about social change, no matter how small (Smilde 2018: 673). Point of departure is the idea that artistic processes can have transformative potential which can bring about a sense of community, inclusion and collective identity.In this chapter, research into musicians’ engagement with new audiences will be explored through examples in the field of music and healthcare. I will do that from a biographical perspective, where the musicians’ personal and professional development is strongly influenced by their experiences in their artistic practice. Here, biographical learning processes are at the core of what we might term, musicians’ “professional performance” (Lombarts 2010).Two examples are discussed in this light, a research into the project “Music for Life”, on music and dementia, taking place in elderly care homes, and another, termed “Meaningful Music in Healthcare”, which is on music in the hospital. After that the chapter will address what everything learnt means for learning and teaching in higher music education, embracing the idea of engaging with new audiences and the potentials of Musikvermittlung.

A health agenda in terms of a learning context

The main focus of this article is on performance anxiety and stage fright in musicians, seen through the lens of biographical research. In short, biographical research deals with research into learning, taking as point of departure that important learning always needs to be understood in relation to the biography of the learner (Alheit 2009, p. 116). Within biographical learning people can act as their own change agents. This article discusses biographical findings on musicians’ generic leadership when coping with profession-related health issues and the transformative and transitional learning evolving from this.

Lifelong learners in music; research into musicians’ biographical learning

This article considers four learning biographies from professional musicians. Each musician holds a different portfolio career and is from a different age category. The key questions I ask are: "How does one learn as a musician?", "What knowledge, attitudes, values and artistic skills are necessary to function effectively and creatively as a contemporary musician?", and "What is the necessary framework of lifelong learning in music education?" My findings are analysed in the light of lifelong learning for musicians with a focus toward teaching and learning.

Improvisation and identity

Seeing improvisation as something that really needs its place in conservatoire training and education may be more or less ‘new’. However improvisation itself is of course not at all new and has existed since as long as we can remember. I will not go into that any further, it would take not a single address but a symposium of at least two weeks.

Biographical research into the teaching and learning of musicians holding a portfolio career

Lifelong and lifewide learning from a biographical perspective

This article describes musicians' lifelong and lifewide learning as it was investigated through biographical research. Key developments in the professional lives of 32 musicians were examined, focusing on critical incidents and educational interventions in their life, educational and career span. The main thread was the question of how these musicians learn. After analysis, three conceptual entities were established in the biographies, the first being musicians' artistic, generic and educational leadership; second, the interconnection between their varied learning styles; and third, their need for an adaptive and responsive learning environment within a reflexive and reflective institutional culture. Two biographical examples of musicians suffering from performance anxiety are described, focusing on their leadership, learning styles and subsequent transformative and transitional learning when developing coping strategies. The article concludes with directions for teaching and learning that can be extrapolated from the findings of biographical research.