Authentic Connection : Music, Spirituality, and Wellbeing

This volume focuses on the ways in which mutual musical engagement might play a role in creating healthful, life-giving experiences. Scholarly chapters and reflective interludes illustrate how people use music to forge authentic spiritual and emotional connections with others, including in times of physical isolation and political unrest. Chapters and interludes address topics such as relationship building, community, wellbeing, therapy, education, and ecology. Each describes various ways in which individuals connect authentically with themselves, others, the music they make, and the physical and spiritual world around them. Many authors address current global crises including the COVID-19 pandemic, racism, nationalism, environmental injustice, and associated climate catastrophes. Authors articulate various qualities of authentic human connections, and discuss various ways in which music might be poised to facilitate emotional and spiritual connections in some of the most challenging and physically isolating times.

Karin S. Hendricks is Associate Professor of Music and Chair of Music Education at Boston University. She has served as an instrumental music clinician, adjudicator, and workshop presenter throughout the United States and abroad. Karin Hendricks has served in state, national, and international music education leadership positions, including as national secretary and research committee chair for the American String Teachers Association, and on the Editorial Committee for the Journal of Research in Music Education. Her research interests include music psychology, motivation, and social justice in music learning settings, with a particular focus on positive student-teacher relationships. She publishes regularly in leading research journals and edited books, and makes a particular effort to present research findings to music teachers in meaningful and approachable ways. She was the 2018 recipient of the American String Teachers Association «Emerging String Researcher» Award. Before moving to the university level, Karin enjoyed a successful public school orchestra career for 13 years, where she received local, state, and national awards for her teaching. Karin Hendricks has published six books, including Compassionate Music Teaching.

June Boyce-Tillman read music at Oxford University and is Professor Emerita of Applied Music at the University of Winchester. She has published widely in the area of education and music, often on spirituality/liminality and eudaimonia. Her doctoral research into children's musical development has been translated into five languages and supported the development of improvisatory activities in the classroom. She has written about and organised events in the area of interfaith dialogue using music, currently the international improvising Peace Choir on ZOOM. She has held visiting fellowships at Indiana University and the Episcopal Divinity School in Massachusetts, US. She is an international performer, especially in the work of Hildegard of Bingen. Her large-scale works for cathedrals such as Winchester, Southwark and Norwich UK involve professional musicians, community choirs, people with disabilities and school children. She is the convenor of Music, Spirituality and Wellbeing international (www.mswinternational.org). She is series editor of the Music and Spirituality series of Peter Lang, to which she has contributed 3 single-authored books and several co-authored or co-edited books. She is an Extra-ordinary Professor at North West University, South Africa. She is an ordained Anglican priest and serves All Saints Church in South London.