Broadening Music Performance: New Approaches and Possibilities for Higher Music Education
26-27 June 2025, University of Surrey
This two-day international conference on Broadening Music Performance in Higher Education provided an inclusive forum for the exchange of evidence-based knowledge and practical insights on developing effective pedagogical practices, suitable for a rapidly shifting HE sector, and on creating meaningful change in and through music education within and beyond academic institutions. The event was well attended by a diverse crowd of delegates including music scholars (both early career and established names in the field), performer-researchers and educators from conservatoires, universities, schools and other music organisations across the UK and internationally.
In fulfilling the ‘broadening’ aim of its title, the conference programme explored fruitful disciplinary synergies across a range of research contexts, such as cultural-historical premises of decoloniality, applied pedagogy in different musical genres, artistic-practice and psychology research. The complementarity and contrast within and across parallel sessions not only sparked stimulating debate but also enabled making connections even when it was not possible to attend every single presentation on offer.
The conference programme blended in a balanced way both theoretical and practice-based interventions. For example, in her paper, Professor Pamela Burnard explored how performances simultaneously embody and enact a plurality of musical creativities—material, bodily, human, other-than-human, technological and sonic. Through the lens of new materialist theories applied to contemporary musics, she proposed a re-imagining of performance education as ‘choreographies of possibilities’. Elsewhere the conference provided practical demonstrations, such as in Rosie Middleton’s hybrid performance-presentation ‘PLASTIC BODIES’, which critiqued acts of discrimination in female opera singers’ training. Maureen Wolloshin’s demonstration of her gliss anglais (a cor anglais on which the keywork is replaced by a magnetic strip) was both a provocation and invitation for adapted instrumental design prioritising the feminine and women’s voices.
There were many other engaging, thought-provoking presentations such as on collaborative songwriting camps (by Katherine Williams), popular music experimental and project-based learning (by Edmond Tsang), jazz guitar improvisation pedagogy (by James Mackay), interdisciplinary performance-based arts education combining music, media, dance, film and broadcast (panel by Sue Miller et al.), innovative practice research for performance teaching at undergraduate level (panel by Mira Benjamin et al.), and on the value of collaborative student-led or staff-student ensemble work (by Murphy McCaleb). Various papers highlighted the importance of refocusing pedagogical attention on ‘process(es) of learning’, rather than the end-goal, through empowering musicians with critical skills for self-directed learning, entrepreneurship, feedback literacy and reflection (as echoed in presentations by Molly Reinker Morgan, Elisa Rumici, Jenna Richards and Evangeline Ching).
Other speakers highlighted that despite innovative initiatives and greater awareness for equity within music organisations and HEIs there is still critical work to be done to bridge the gaps in neuroinclusive music education provision (as reiterated by Monica Esslin-Peard and Kamara Telesia, Beth Black, Eleanor Guénault and Kate Andrews and Georgie Spray).
Equally important within the conference programme was the emphasis on embedding care, health education and career coaching more centrally in music HE provision for preparing musicians for healthy and sustainable careers, as represented by a clutch of papers (by Rosie Perkins and Neta Spiro, Lucy Smith, Raluca Matei and the panel by Diana Roberts et al.).
The keynote address and the two invited talks provided further scope and space for reflection and debate on the timeliness (if not urgency) of instilling more radical change in HE music curricula; not in a tokenistic manner but from the ground-level up and through embracing the values of mutuality, empathy, collaborative participation and vulnerability in order to enact authentic (musical) identities. In her keynote, Professor Laudan Nooshin, took the long historical view on music provision at HE level in the UK to question the normative thinking in music studies over the years. Having highlighted the successes and pitfalls of various eras she proposed ways forward on how to unravel systems of exclusion by turning her attention to sensory equity and sonic justice, citing her recent research projects in these areas. Nooshin’s call for a ‘broadening of the student demographic’ and a ‘breaking down of silos in music academia’ through experimenting, participation, attunement to diversity of human experience in the plurality of sounds and spaces that exist, echoed Burnard’s take on pluralising creativities.
Approaching from a US perspective, and the autobiographical lens of being a ‘Latino music professor’, as he put it, Professor David Garcia (from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) shared his decades-long work as an educator on decolonising the music curriculum in the US context. Garcia outlined the institutional barriers (financial, administrative, intellectual, lack of diversity in the workforce etc.) in creating lasting curricular reform that goes beyond a superficial acknowledgement of the need to dismantle the ideological bias of Western art music’s singularity and supremacy. By emphasising that music performance education ought to extend beyond competence in technical skills to include ‘competence in connecting and relating to others through musicking’, Garcia highlighted that coloniality will continue to be sustained unless we change how we teach music.
Expanding on Garcia’s take on decolonial praxis, Eleanor Ryan’s paper offered a self-reflexive lens as a tool through which not only to view but also to practise decoloniality in music education. Using a methodology combining counter-intuitive listening and counter archiving to capture black students’ experiences, Ryan showed how de/coloniality in student performances emerged as ‘bifurcations of being’, ‘quiet rebellions’ and ‘diverse listening responses’ to the Western art music canon.
The invited talk by Dr Liz Haddon (Reader in Music Education at the University of York) commenced with a performance of a piano piece to illustrate the importance of the enjoyment of ‘just playing’ even when this is not for the purpose of demonstrating professional excellence. She went on to scrutinise notions of ‘excellence’ upheld within the neoliberal context of UK HEIs that are problematic when considered through the lens of EDI. In addressing the question of how we can foster a sense of community within our educational institutions, Haddon proposed deformalizing spaces for music making, nurturing greater inter-connectedness between HEIs and the external world, and the sharing or co-designing of staff and student creative practices.
The conference organisers wish to thank all delegates who made this event a success not only in terms of rigour of content, diversity of practical interventions or richness of research methodologies but also in terms of fostering a supportive, inclusive, communal spirit across the two June days, all the more brightened by the glorious summer sun. We thank the RMA for their generous support for this conference and its mission.
(Report by Dr Georgia Volioti and Professor Sue Miller)
https://broadeningmusicperformanceinhighereducation2025.wordpress.com