Teaching and Evaluating Music Performance at University: Beyond the Conservatory Model

Fresh perspectives on teaching and evaluating music performance in higher education are offered in this book. One-to-one pedagogy and Western art music, once default positions of instrumental teaching, are giving way to a range of approaches that seek to engage with the challenges of the music industry and higher education sector funding models of the twenty-first century. Many of these approaches – formal, informal, semi-autonomous, notated, using improvisation or aleatory principles, incorporating new technology – are discussed here. Chapters also consider the evolution of the student, play as a medium for learning, reflective essay writing, multimodal performance, interactivity and assessment criteria.

The contributors to this edited volume are lecturer-practitioners – choristers, instrumentalists, producers and technologists who ground their research in real-life situations. The perspectives extend to the challenges of professional development programs and in several chapters incorporate the experiences of students.

Grounded in the latest music education research, the book surveys a contemporary landscape where all types of musical expression are valued; not just those of the conservatory model of decades past. This volume will provide ideas and spark debate for anyone teaching and evaluating music performance in higher education.

John Encarnacao lectures in music at Western Sydney University, Australia. His book, Punk Aesthetics and New Folk (2013/2016), is an alternate history of popular music argued through the analysis of recordings that span the period 1926–2011. He has also published essays on Throbbing Gristle, Courtney Barnett and Angela Carter. As a guitarist, singer, songwriter, composer and improviser he has some 30 releases to his credit.

Diana Blom, Associate Professor of Music at Western Sydney University, has published on higher education music performance and preparing new music for performance. She is co-author (with Matthew Hindson and Damien Barbler) of Music Composition Toolbox (2007). A composer and keyboard player, she has co-curated several CDs for release.