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

by John Encarnacao (Editor), Diana Blom (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138505919
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/14/2020
Series:	ISME Series in Music Education
Pages:	268
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

1. Teaching and evaluating music performance at university: a twenty-first century landscape

John Encarnacao and Diana Blom

PART II

Student experiences 1

2. Reassessing what we call music: investigating undergraduate music student response to avant-garde music through Annea Lockwood’s "Piano Burning"

Diana Blom and Raymond Strickland

Teaching approaches: Student collaboration

3. All together now: semi-autonomous ensemble building through collaboration

Eleanor McPhee

4. Transformational insights and the singing-self: investigating reflection and reflexivity in vocal and musical group learning

Diane Hughes

5. The iPad Orkestra ensemble: creative and collaborative learning

Ian Stevenson and Diana Blom

PART II

Student experiences 2

6. Back to the future: a role for 1960s improvisatory scores in the 21st century undergraduate music performance program

Diana Blom, Brendan Smyly and John Encarnacao

Professional development

7. A professional development program to facilitate group music performance teaching

Annie Mitchell

Teaching approaches: performance practice

8. Implementing group teaching in music performance

Annie Mitchell

9. Introducing first year music students to the choral experience: skills for lifelong enjoyment and for the portfolio career

Naomi Cooper

10. Free improvisation: what is it, can it be taught, and what are the benefits?

John Encarnacao, Brendan Smyly and Monica Brooks

11. Performativity and interactivity: pre-paradigmatic performance

Ian Stevenson

12. Expanded practice: facilitating the integration of visual media, theatricality and sound technology into music performance

Ian Stevenson, John Encarnacao and Eleanor McPhee

PART III

Student experiences 3

13. Play as a medium for active learning in vocal education at university

Lotte Latukefu and Irina Verenikina

Evaluating performance

14. Disciplinary perspectives on music performance through the lens of assessment criteria

Ian Stevenson

15. Engaging music performance students in practice-led reflective essay writing and video/recording analysis

Eleanor McPhee and Diana Blom

PART IV

Student experiences 4

16. Curriculum as catalyst: from rock guitarist to transcendent improvisation

Adrian Barr and Diana Blom

CONCLUSION

17. Provocations for change in higher music education

Glen Carruthers