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 …

Ringvorlesung on Engaging with new audiences – perspectives of musicians’ biographical learning and its potential for higher music education

Samenvatting Dit onderzoek komt voort uit mijn interesse voor de beroepspraktijk van oudere beeldend kunstenaars. Kan deze beroepspraktijk ook als een vorm van levenslang en levensbreed leren beschouwd worden? Aangezien in de artistieke praktijk en in het leerproces van de kunstenaar het ‘zelf’ een prominente …

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 …

This essay addresses the relationship of improvisation and identity. Biographical research that was conducted by the author into professional musicians’ lifelong learning showed the huge importance of improvisation for personal expression. Musically, the concept of sound appeared to serve as a strong …

Biography, identity, improvisation, sound.

10 Years Lifelong Learning in Music. Today we will look back on the work in the LLM group during the past 10 years, and we will look to the future as well. Lifelong Learning for musicians is a never-ending theme, as there is always much change to respond to. And this is something which may become very …

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 would like to talk to you about what improvisation means for musicians, …