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Earlier research has stated the need for conservatory education to prepare aspiring musicians more thoroughly for a dynamic and changing society. A project that challenges the conservatory tradition is Sammankonst (TogetherArt) where students at a musical theatre program at folk high school level collaborate with intellectually disabled adults. Based on a phenomenological way of thinking, this article aims to describe and analyze the education of aspiring musicians for professional participation in society based on an analysis of experiences among conservatory students, music theater students and their teachers. Interviews were made with six conservatory students, 15 musical theatre students, and two teachers. The results show ambiguities when it comes to what voice students should be prepared for and how the choice of preparations influence the view of singing and musicians’ quality competence.

Musikerstudenter inom klassisk västerländsk musik utbildas i ett europeiskt perspektiv vid musikhögskolor, sprungna ur den konservatorietradition som uppstod under 1800-talet inom vilken hantverksmässiga färdigheter betonades. I och med Bologna- anpassningen av musikerutbildningarna fick reflektion ökad betydelse vilket har aktualiserat relationen och spänningen mellan praktik och teori i undervisningen. Dock har vare sig vilka aspekter av musikerprofessionen som dylik reflektion omfattar eller hur utbildningarna förbereder studenter för att kunna agera med gott omdöme i sin yrkespraktik hitintills beforskats i någon högre grad. Vår avsikt är att i denna resonerande artikel söka skissera och problematisera ett förslag på vad ett professionellt omdöme skulle kunna innebära för klassiska musiker och hur det kan kultiveras inom högre musikutbildning. Med utgångspunkt i ett exempel från en av författarnas konstnärliga praktik, Hannah Arendts omdömesfilosofi, samt författarnas tidigare och pågående forskning inom området resonerar vi om vad undervisning och lärande av ett professionellt omdöme bland klassiska musikerstudenter kan och skulle kunna innebära i en konstnärlig akademisk professionsutbildning. ENGLISH ABSTRACT Opening for a different musical being: Cultivating classical music students’ professional judgment From a European perspective, musicians in Western classical music are educated at conservatories, stemming from the conservatory tradition that arose in the 19th century, emphasising craftsmanship. With the Bologna adaptation of higher musician education, the significance of reflection has increased, which has brought attention to the relationship and tension between practice and theory in conservatory teaching. However, neither the aspects of the musician’s profession that such reflection encompasses nor how the educational programs prepare students to act with good judgment in their professional practice have previously been researched to any greater degree. Our intention in this reflective article is to outline and problematise a proposal for what professional judgment could entail for classical musicians and how it can be cultivated within higher music education. Drawing on an example from one of the authors’ artistic practice, Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of judgment, as well as the authors’ previous and ongoing research, we highlight what teaching and learning of professional judgment among classical musicians can and could mean in an artistic, academic, professional education.

Music educational researchers in the Nordic countries have pointed out how municipal arts schools are organised based on, and tend to reproduce, anthropocentric values and approaches, and that such unequal norms and structures are to be challenged. Taking a border-crossing musical comedy project as a starting point, the specific aim of the current study is to illuminate how, and on what levels, organisational norms and traditional structures can be challenged, and what possibilities and new challenges that occur in a project taking place beyond the Anthropocene. To be able to grasp the aspects of becoming within the project and how that is related to aspects of organisation, we created a research entanglement based on post-human theory. Hence, situations seen as webs of relations were created, including the actors: humans with intellectual disabilities, musical performance students, educators, artists, researchers, and varied digital communication tools. Observations, video recordings, collaborative writing, qualitative surveys, and interviews produced material for analysis. Actor-network theory was applied aiming to describe how the constantly performed intra-active networks were constituted, as well as how the actors influenced each other. The results identify significant actors and trajectories in Sammankonst, that in turn challenge anthropocentric organisational structures of municipal arts schools.

Having the possibility to experience meaning in artistic settings is a human right. However, several studies show that structures and norms may prevent human beings from participating in artistic and cultural activities. Moreover, it is not given that all forms of participation offer meaningful experiences, something which puts a great responsibility upon organizers of artistic events. The current study is based in a project where elderly people were given the chance to participate in processes of development and performance of collaborative contemporary dance. The specific aim of the study was to describe and analyse the phenomenon of the meaningful body based on a phenomenological approach. To get access to the dancers’ lived experiences, six participants were interviewed. The transcribed interviews were analysed in a phenomenological manner. The analysis resulted in three themes, which together describe the phenomenon of the lived body, namely: the intertwined body, the border-crossing body, and the body feeling at home. The themes are related to phenomenological philosophy regarding aging, awareness, existence, and aesthetic experience, as well as to art education situations and societal norms. Keywords: elderly dancers, meaningful body, phenomenology, intertwinement, border-crossing, joy Webpage photo: Anders Larsson

This article explores the meaning and function of streaming media as a potential facilitator of musical Bildung. Taking the affordances of streaming media technologies as a starting point, the article thus focuses on the formative and cultivating dimensions a music streaming service such as Spotify might offer. The specific aim of this article is to describe and analyse how musical Bildung may evolve within a Spotify context from a user perspective. To address the aim from the point of view of music education, Spotify users’ activities and experiences of streaming media interactions were accessed, inspired by internet-related ethnography. Stimulated recall interviews, focusing on the participants’ experiences as well as their actual use of Spotify’s streaming service, were conducted, recorded, and transcribed. The generated material was subjected to co-operative hermeneutic content analysis. The results illuminate how Bildung evolves in users’ encounters with the service and with art mediated via Spotify. Relevant topics occurring in the human-art-technology relationship of Bildung from a Heideggerian perspective were Being-possible, the ability-to-be, and Spotify as the Other. In sum, it can be stated that Bildung evolves when Spotify exceeds the thingness of the Other, becoming a work of art in itself, throwing the user into Being.

Recent studies of female guitar students in upper secondary school ensemble education suggest that girls behave, and are encouraged to behave, in more immanent ways than boys. They seem to receive less encouragement to stretch their bodies and become full musical human beings. Instead they become the second musical sex. During the course of my work with the problem of how to create space for girls playing the electric guitar in educational settings, I have continually found myself wondering how to create educational spaces and relations in ways that let all pupils, independent of sex, realize ideas, transcend as musical bodies, and become what they already are. If teachers and pupils are interrelated bodies, teachers must be aware of how they use their bodies when it comes to creating space for all pupils to develop and stretch out their bodies. The actions of the music teacher, as a musical body, must be balanced in relation to the other musical bodies in the room, as well as to physical preconditions, goals, visions, and expectations of the students. In this article, I want to delve into the subject of bodily interaction, teachers’ responsibilities, and questions of intentional educational bodily relations. The aim is to share my close reading of Young’s philosophical thinking regarding gender structures and especially female comportment, motility, and spatiality, and develop a set of prerequisites for intentional bodily (music) educational relations. With a starting point in research-based inspiration and motivation for conducting the current philosophical investigation, I share my close reading of Young’s theories regarding female situated bodies. Continually I relate to excerpts from two interviews with female guitar students, exemplifying musical body-relational experiences. Finally I share and reflect upon a developed thinking about mindful bodily (music) educational relations.

As a contribution to the critical and creative discussion regarding definitions and examples of how dance practices are being reimagined in the age of distance, this article focuses on possibilities and challenges with organizing virtual contemporary dance workshops for older adults. The aim of this article is to explore intra-actions within entanglements including older adult amateur dancers, a choreographer, homes, dance studios, the software zoom, devices, music, and dance during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Situations seen as webs of relations including the mentioned actors were created. To be able to describe how the constantly performed intra-active networks of dancers and other material actors were constituted, actor-network theory was applied. The results show specific trajectories that exemplifies intra-actions with the participants. The older adults became dancers that make meaning in their lives, even if the virtual trajectories possible to follow to some extent, are limited by the pandemic cursed distance

The starting point for the study presented in this article is constituted by experiences of using Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophy and Iris Marion Young theories aiming to describe and understand the becoming of musical women in Swedish schools. Earlier research conducted outside the area of music shows that Beauvoir’s theories can help to explain – and provide means of change for – situations where there is a risk that traditional gender roles will be conserved. A majority of gender studies in the field of music education are based on the performativity theory of Judith Butler. In comparison, de Beauvoir states that repetitions and habits are stratified in the body as experiences, and that human beings are able to make choices in a situation. The aim of the study is to explore how caring is nurtured among girls in Swedish music educational settings. Material generated through two phenomenological studies conducted within specialist music programs in lower respectively higher secondary education in Sweden, constituted the empirical base for conducting re-analysis. This re-analysis followed a hermeneutical phenomenological analytical model. Examples of how caring seemed to be nurtured among girls in music education appeared at different levels and in different situations. It concerns actions made by the girls aiming to make the social and musical setting function in agreed upon ways, namely in the form of taking initiatives, filling “gaps”, and being flexible. Finally we reflect upon causes and changes in relation to actions that seem to establish and maintain female students as immanent, and non-able to run their own projects.

This article takes experiences from a contemporary multi-artistic dance project as a starting-point. The aim is to describe and explore how such a project can offer possibilities for being and becoming among elderly amateur dancers, based on a phenomenological way of thinking. The phenomenon of the investigation is self-conceptualization. The multi-artistic process and context is defined as an adult educational situation. To come close to the lived experiences of the dancers, the rehearsals as well as the performance were observed, and documented. Six of the participants were also interviewed. The material was analyzed in a hermeneutical phenomenological manner, and de Beauvoir’s thinking regarding aging, was used as a theoretical lens. The results show how the self-images of the participants change throughout the project. The dance activities seem to give the elderly possibilities to remain themselves, even if they become different. They learn to know themselves, each other and the world.

When the need of transforming and remixing music education is illuminated, fields of tensions in relation to the traditional master-apprentice model of teaching often appear. Binaries have been constructed and critiqued in research to describe tensions at various music educational levels. Some studies have also asked for a holistic, "both/and" holding. In higher music education (HME), the need for new approaches in research to understand how teaching and learning is developing are asked for. As a contribution, the overall aim of the article is to illuminate to what extent traditional culture norms and structures are maintained and challenged at three European conservatories. The specific aim is to map possible fields of tension surrounding approaches to teaching and related learning. The analysis in this article partly builds on understandings of culture and institutions, and partly on theories of relational pedagogy. To get access to how leaders, teachers, and students experience participating in the teaching and learning of conservatory cultures, an interview study was planned. The transcriptions were treated by a thematic analysis model. The analysis explored three themes that represent fields of tension: teaching in relation to established cultural structures, to create or not create new learning trajectories, and collaboration or competition--the educational culture. The fields of tension found through the analysis concern relations between the traditional conserved conservatory teaching and new open and diverse thoughts about and actions within in HME teaching. It becomes obvious that creating new learning trajectories should be a common issue, involving students and teachers, as well as leaders of conservatories, and that competition should be supported by collaboration. A consequence of such a pedagogical approach would be that differences between programs for diverse instruments could be balanced, and that all involved could learn from each other, which demands flexibility between individual and collaborative learning activities.

While "access models" represented by subscription services such as Spotify make vast libraries of music practically accessible to teachers, digital streaming programs also introduce new complexities to classroom settings. Therefore, the concept of digitalization in relation to listening requires the attention of researchers in education and didactics. This article examines the ways in which Swedish teachers use Spotify, including how usage influences teachers' didactic choices and approaches to planning for music teaching and learning. Research participants included eight music educators with experiences in streaming music services in music classrooms. Findings show that digital literacy and the listening, teaching, and learning of music are inextricably intertwined; and that placing the application of music streaming in the context of a music classroom creates complications in practice. Implications highlight the importance of identifying and discussing complex issues occurring as a result of the use of streaming services in music classroom, gaining music streaming didactic literacy which is both a didactic competency that teachers use in planning for teaching, as well as a content for students to learn.