Royal Birmingham Conservatoire

Abstract This research, carried out across 2017–2018, investigated Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (RBC) graduates’ experiences of working as instrumental teachers. A total of 31 participants (who graduated across 2012–2016 and studied an optional ‘Further Pedagogy’ module in their final year) responded to a questionnaire, and two were observed whilst teaching, and subsequently interviewed (2018). Results indicate that RBC students who chose to extend their pedagogical training beyond the core provision offered in the third year proved highly employable as instrumental teachers. Graduates considered teaching to be both fulfilling and challenging and were able to use insights gained ‘on the job’ to advise others. Whilst the sample was clearly limited, these findings contribute to an improved understanding of how instrumental teacher education in conservatoires might be further developed to effectively prepare students for the profession.

A skilled music education workforce is essential to ensure longevity of music-making for future generations of young learners and access to high-quality instrumental music tuition remains crucial for school-aged pupils. Yet, Higher Education providers, including conservatoires, are not held accountable for providing high-quality pedagogical training to ensure that music graduates are best equipped to support musical learning in children and young people. Perspectives on instrumental teacher education obtained through interviews with academics at six English conservatoires were triangulated with questionnaire responses from senior leaders of 66 Music Education Hubs in England. Findings revealed institutional challenges relating to the privileging of principal study activity; inconsistent pedagogical provision across the conservatoire sector, and a mismatch between students’ pedagogical training and employer expectations. Closer collaboration and dialogue between institutions and employers are recommended to ensure that conservatoire graduates are trained appropriately to meet the needs of the modern music education sector.

Music education in England has been in a state of flux for a number of years due to the complexities and variability of its delivery. Many of the issues surrounding music education in England are associated with policy and practice in schools, and the complexities of funding and deployment of music activities. This creates contextual, structural and political boundaries, especially on partnership work that seeks to join up provision. This paper presents findings from a four-year longitudinal project that aimed to explore the role of partnership work between schools and out-of-school music providers. It also critiques structural issues and limitations of music education in England, offering new insight and resolutions. Methodologically there has been an emerging interest in diffractive approaches and the intra-actions they produce (Barad [2007] Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press; Haraway [2008] When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). An important part of the paper is to outline the importance of these novel methodologies that go beyond reflection and raise important questions regarding the role of diffractive and intra-active processes in education research projects. This is a novel consideration, which is pertinent for music education research internationally. The paper concludes with a reconceptualisation of partnership work, and new theoretical underpinnings for future partnerships.

This article will be of interest to somatic movement dance therapists who work with people suffering from stress, anxiety and depression. Anyone suffering from sympathetic neural expression (fear and anxiety) might find this article useful. Within this article I detail information and practice that supports participants moving from a sympathetic state into parasympathetic release. Two of my students have provided practice-based enactments of the physiological theory they study on the programme ‘bio-somatic dance movement naturotherapy’. The article is divided into five parts. Each part provides theory about the autonomic nervous system (ANS), the vagus nerve and the practice of bio-somatic dance movement naturotherapy. The first part is called ‘The intelligence of the autonomic nervous system’. The second part is called ‘The vagus nerve'. The third part is called ‘The geography of the autonomic nervous system’. The fourth part is called ‘The New Vagus’. The fifth part is called ‘Beta, alpha and theta’. The article provides essential information on embodied healing, offered to enhance our understanding about the scientific underpinnings of practice. Another area covered is the relationship between the parasympathetic and beta, alpha and theta.

The JPI-Heritage Plus supported Cultural Heritage and Improvised Music in European Festivals (CHIME) project was established to examine the workings of jazz festivals and their relationship to cultural heritage as discursive practice. Jazz festivals occupy a significant – if undervalued – place in the ecologies of Europe’s cultural heritage, with their dynamic and synergetic relationship to spaces and cultural sites. Drawing on a number of case studies and interviews with members of the Europe Jazz Network, this article presents a typology of European jazz festivals and cultural heritage sites that can be used to inform the different ways in which jazz offers meaning to specific groups and locations. By viewing jazz festivals through the lens of cultural heritage, we can begin to challenge reified presentations of heritage that promote uncomplicated interpretations of nations, people and their associated cultural narratives. Festivals offer meaning to specific groups through acts of remembrance or commemoration, they have the potential to engage with a multitude of voices, and their locations enable people to negotiate a sense of belonging or to (re)consider their place in the world.

Abstract A-level music, a qualification taken most often in English and Welsh school contexts around the age of 18, has been a long-standing feature of the musical training of many musicians. Historically bound up with Western European Art Music, the qualification has somewhat broadened its horizons in recent times, though with mixed success in opening up new ways of thinking about music. Recent research has highlighted the seemingly precarious nature of A-level music in many English schools. The reasons for this picture of decline are highly complex and difficult to disentangle, and are part of a much broader diminishing of creative subjects in the school curriculum. Decreasing numbers of A-level music entries run somewhat counter to popular policy discourse, which celebrates flagship announcements of £79 million given to Music Education Hubs in 2019–2020, and 2018 survey results that reported more than 700,000 children learning to play a musical instrument through music hub provision. However, behind these headlines, although there are many children having the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, few continue through to A-level and beyond. Despite its declining numbers, A-level music is recognised as a valuable qualification amongst music teachers, offering something distinct from graded music examinations and other Level 3 musical qualifications. This article presents the results of a recent nationwide survey of A-level music teachers to offer an insight into teacher perceptions of current A-level music specifications, the extent to which it prepares students for entry into higher musical education, and its appropriateness for aspiring young musicians.

The principle of distributed music with musicians performing in different locations and connected via the Internet has been investigated over several decades, with numerous performances demonstrated mostly as a proof of concept. In this workshop paper we describe our novel approach of creating a hyper-realistic interaction scenario with professional music celebrity Jamie Cullum, three public audiences and an online teaching class using 5G hardware. We explain the general motivation of the event, the technical setup in terms of audio, video and 5G networking and the technical as well as artistic challenges. This workshop paper provides general information about the event. Technical details, descriptive media and further insights will be provided within the workshop presentation.

Abstract Higher music education institutions should continually review their curricula to ensure that their graduates are best equipped to support musical learning for children and young people. Perspectives on early careers in instrumental teaching were obtained via an alumni-led workshop and focus group at a UK conservatoire. Findings revealed that whilst extensive pedagogical training was offered, its value was not fully acknowledged across the institution and that more could be done to alleviate students’ anxieties about their developing musician identities and future stability. As new teachers, alumni are well placed to help prepare students for the professional realities of joining the music education workforce.

Abstract The Whole Class Ensemble Tuition (WCET) is a model of teaching and learning music which takes place in many English primary schools. It is a relative newcomer to music pedagogy in the primary school. In the groundbreaking study reported in this paper, two new models of teaching and learning music are proposed. These are (a) Music education starts with the instrument and (b) Music education takes place via the instrument. Conceptualised descriptions of classroom music pedagogies are not commonplace, and so this paper makes a significant contribution to the music education research literature by delineating, describing and labelling two of these with reference to the WCET programme. These distinctions are of international significance and are useful to describe differences between programmes, which constitutes a major contribution to music curricula discussions. The paper concludes that clarity on the purposes of teaching and learning is fundamental to effective musical pedagogy and that this is a matter that education systems worldwide should be considering.

This extensive article shares foundational practices and theory developed in the field of bio-somatic dance movement naturotherapy (a two-year professional training in association with The International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association ISMETA). Unique to this programme is the experiential study of the cranial bones, craniosacral motion, restoring balance through the parasympathetic experience, and a deep blend of western anatomical knowledge with the subjective living experience of the organism. In this article I share foundational practices that often start sessions. The key areas covered in this article ares‘the occiput as a fulcrum’, ‘the scapulae as fulcrums’, ‘the sacrum as a fulcrum’, ‘sensory awareness of the foramen magnum and the jugular foramina’, ‘releasing soft tissues in the suboccipital region’, ‘expansion, contraction, flexion and extension of the cranial bones’, ‘craniosacral and thoracolumbar divisions’ and ‘the flow of cerebral spinal fluid’. Here I discuss discreet areas of the body in anatomical and physiological detail, but always in relation to the whole. In this way, I am working in a post-cartesian framework, which is one of the defining educational and therapeutic features of practice internationally, where there is an applied balance between objective science and the subject experience of living breathing tissues.

In this article, I expand western anatomy’s normative geography of the vertebral column to include the atlantooccipital joints, the sphenoid-basilar joint, the occipital bone, the cranial sutures and the sacroiliac joints. The sphenoid-basilar joint is considered one of the most important joints to contact in the practice of bio-somatic dance movement naturotherapy; it is a central joint and point of conscious awareness that organizes the entire vertebral column. Further, I share scientific reasons why gravity and an extended sense-perception of the vertebral column beyond the normative is essential to health. The article invites the craniosacral system into expression, the dural membranes into awareness, and the vagus nerve into creative play. Other areas discussed are the intervertebral discs, the facet joints and the primary and secondary curves. Notably, this anatomical theory is enacted through post-Newtonian somatic principles that bring objectified theory alive through the living soma on the academic page.

Writing in BBC Music Magazine in July 1999, editor Helen Wallace remarked on the rapid decline in space allocated to classical music criticism in British newspapers, notably in The Times , The Independent , The Guardian and Financial Times , all of which had previously provided extensive, important coverage. ‘Concert reports provide the very oxygen needed to keep a flourishing musical scene alive’, she noted, and ‘[if] an event is ignored, it is as if it did not exist.’ However, she perceived a ‘ray of hope’ in the Internet, which ‘has no space restriction: maybe the dawn of a new era is nigh …’.

Conservatoires train musicians to high levels of proficiency in performance and other ‘principal study’ disciplines, but often, teaching is perceived as a second-class profession, and little is known about how music students learn to facilitate music making in others. Yet, conservatoires have a responsibility to contribute to the development of the music education workforce. Building on Shulman’s Pedagogical Content Knowledge model (PCK), two new constructs are created from data gathered through textual narratives and semi-structured interviews from over 100 music undergraduates who reflect on their instrumental teacher education in a UK conservatoire. Transferable Content Knowledge (TCK) encapsulates the transferable skills that students develop in a conservatoire setting, enabling them to become confident communicators and collaborators. Values-Based Knowledge (VBK) nurtures a sense of social responsibility, raising students’ awareness of the professional qualities and behaviours necessary to forge positive relationships and create stimulating learning environments. The emergent ‘Developing Pedagogical Knowledge’ (DPK) framework offers scope to explore the transition from student to teacher across other phases of education and in other disciplines.

The paper presents an artwork, embedded in a public-use building complex, comprising four interactive, sight specific installations. The artwork employs ubiquitous computing technologies and a variety of other components (projector, LED matrix displays, physical and custom-made objects) to sense, collect and translate urban, environmental data and human input into evolving multisensory representations, affording hybrid spatial experiences. The artwork aims at highlighting the impact of human activity upon the environment and the nonhuman entities that inhabit it, shifting the focus to a post-anthropocentric view of the world.

The forging and maintenance of alumni relations is critical to the sustainability of Higher Music Education Institutions worldwide. In contrast to university-based career mentoring programmes, research about the role of alumni in conservatoire students’ professional development is scarce. Alumni profiles are often used to support conservatoires’ marketing campaigns, featuring graduates perceived as having the most ‘successful’ careers. Yet, alumni can contribute significantly to conservatoire education by being honest about their lived experiences as graduates and breaking down perceived barriers relating to what constitutes success in music. This research addresses a significant gap in the literature by involving conservatoire staff as participants. Firstly, perspectives on alumni involvement in a UK conservatoire’s day-to-day activity were gathered from 64 staff via an online questionnaire. Subsequently, researcher observations of a series of career seminars led by ten alumni provided context for semi-structured interviews with two academic staff who organised the series. The findings, which are developed into a model for ‘alumni in conservatoire education’, show that whilst conservatoire staff were committed to supporting students’ professional development through alumni activities, the benefits of alumni contributions for the professional development of staff could be more widely recognised, to further develop institutional approaches to supporting student-professional transition.

It has been argued that conservatoires in England have a responsibility to train music educators. This article proposes that alumni could have an important role to play in contributing to their former institution’s instrumental music teacher education provision and explores how two UK conservatoire graduates with at least three years teaching experience mentored students on placements in professional teaching contexts. Through online semi-structured interviews, the two alumni reflected on their own mentoring styles, the benefits and challenges of mentoring, their prior experience of being mentored on placement as former students, and the perceived benefits of reciprocal learning through mentorship. Findings suggest that alumni believe they can offer valuable insights into early instrumental teaching careers. Though long-established teachers are often chosen to be mentors, arguably, alumni are more relatable as workplace role models for current students. Furthermore, it is proposed that mentor schemes offered in conjunction with employers enable conservatoires to continue to support instrumental teacher development long after their students have graduated, since reciprocal learning processes lead mentors to reflect on their own practice, deepening their pedagogical knowledge and metacognitive awareness.

This essay introduces the special collection 'Representing Classical Music in the Twenty-First Century'. The editors outline what the collection is about and explain how it developed before providing synopses of the articles and linking them together. They argue for the importance of joined-up thinking between scholars from multiple disciplines, artists working across different media forms, and professionals in the classical music industry.

Composing remains a male-dominated field within the domain of Western art music. Through analysis of two case studies of composing education schemes in Finland (Equity in Composing/Yhdenvertaisesti säveltäen), and England (Young Composers Project), this paper seeks to better understand how music education may play a role in addressing and alleviating gender inequality in music composing. Thematic analysis of qualitative data identified three ways in which the two educational projects addressed issues related to inequality in composing, namely by (1) challenging narrow perceptions of “The Composer”; (2) addressing the lack of diverse role models; and (3) introducing diverse pedagogical approaches in composing. The findings illustrate how music education has the potential to challenge narrow and stereotypical perceptions of what it is to become and be a composer, and provide alternative and more diverse narratives.

The ATHsENSe installation is a four part AV installation based on environmental data from the city of Athens. It comprises four different installations: a visualization projection of the data, a sound installation where the data are being sonified, an installation comprising eight LED displays projecting texts from users of the web app of ATHsENSe, and a light installation reflecting the sound levels of a central point of Athens. The second of the four installations is presented here where data concerning CO, CO2, humidity and others, together with texts provided by the web app users, are being sonified in a six-channel surround installation. In addition to the electronic sounds of the sonification, four kinetic sculptures are being triggered by the system which create acoustic sounds by hitting found objects. This installation is located at the Serafeio complex in Athens, and was commissioned to the Spatial Research Media Group by the municipality of Athens after their successful participation in the Interventions in the City competition.

Conductors are typically presumed to possess the physical, interpretative control in choral performance. Questioning that presumption, this article explores how student conductors might be encouraged to engage physically with the musical sound – and sounding bodies – of a choir. It argues that singers’ vocal performance directly and fruitfully impacts on a conductor’s gestural leadership. Borrowing techniques from established physical/movement-based performance and theatre, it explores how conductors might act as the embodied nexus of the poietic and esthesic dimensions of interpretation (Nattiez, 1990), thus collaboratively constructing a performance. To frame the discussion, a conceptualisation of the overlap between body and voice is set out. This conceptualisation emerged during the development of vocal-physical performance projects (2015-16) and was subsequently developed into a broader philosophical orientation. Focusing on issues of embodiment and empathy, this orientation is enlisted to re-examine choral conducting training practices. The influence of these explorations on Daniel Galbreath’s choral conducting teaching is outlined. Additional action-research with theatre practitioner and teacher Gavin Thatcher is then detailed to demonstrate further developments and disruptions to Galbreath’s practice. As a result, a conducting training practice emerges from these practical enquiries that exploits performers’ mutual, direct physical contact via sound.