This book addresses the need to rethink the concept and enactment of professionalism in music, and how such concepts underpin professional higher music education. There is an urgent imperative to enable the potential of professional musicians in our contemporary societies to be more fully realised, recognising both intense challenges that are currently threatening some traditional music practices, and significant scope for new practices to be imagined in response to deep veins of societal need. Professionalism encompasses the conduct, aims, values, responsibilities and ongoing development of a practising professional in the field. Professional higher music education engages both with providing future professionals with relevant education in particular craft skills, and with nurturing their visions for their work as artists in future societies. The major focus of the book is on performance traditions that have dominated professional higher education, notably western classical music.
About the Author:

Professor Helena Gaunt is Principal at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama.

Helena is a National Teaching Fellow and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education

Academy. Research interests include one-to-one instrumental/vocal tuition in

music, ensemble practices and collaborative learning in the performing arts, and

creative entrepreneurship. Helena directs the international Refl ective Conservatoire

Conference hosted triennially at the Guildhall, and is the Chair of the Innovative

Conservatoire (ICON), an international partnership dedicated to curriculum and

leadership development in specialist music education. She is also co-editor of

Music Performance Research and a member of the Editorial Board of the British

Journal of Music Education. Alongside research, she is an oboist, was a member

of the Britten Sinfonia for many years, and is a Trustee of the National Youth

Orchestra of Great Britain.

Heidi Westerlund is Professor at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts

Helsinki, Finland, where she is responsible for the music education doctoral studies.

Her research interests include music teacher education, collaborative learning,

cultural diversity and democracy in music education, and philosophy of music

education. She is the Editor-in-chief of the Finnish Journal of Music Education and

has served in the editorial and reviewer boards in numerous international journals.

She is the co-editor of Collaborative Learning in Higher Music Education (Ashgate,

2013), Music, Education, and Religion: Intersections and Entanglements (Indiana

University Press, 2019), and Visions for Intercultural Music Teacher Education

(Springer, 2019). She is currently leading two research projects funded by the

Academy of Finland that have engaged altogether over 100 researchers: ArtsEqual -

The Arts as Public Service: Strategic Steps towards Equality (2015-2021) and Global

Visions through Mobilizing Networks: Co-developing Intercultural Music Teacher

Education in Finland, Israel and Nepal (2015-2020).