Decolonial Approaches in Music Mediation1 Lisa Gaupp Introduction Music mediation fosters “diverse relationships between people and musics” and is often designed “for specific dialogue groups” (Petri-Preis and Voit 2025). The term “dialogue group” is gaining acceptance over the more one-directional “target group”, since it acknowledges the negotiation processes inherent in music mediation. However, music mediation still aims to define …
Intercultural Co-Creation in Times of Uncertainty Barbara Balba Weber From 2021 to 2023, young people with diverse life experiences, histories, and educational backgrounds became cultural mediators in a remote area of Switzerland’s border to Italy. The main protagonists were the so-called storytellers – a group of 40-50 people, primarily of Afghan origin, along with arts students from Northern Switzerland …
Maria Westvall and Charles Carson Introduction Can music be both the expression and cause of social change? In what ways can more diversified approaches within higher music institutions – including a diversity of ideas, cultural expressions, peoples, and perspectives – inform and enrich the roles and goals of these institutions? Moreover, can increased and equitable accessibility to art and …
Immanuel de Gilde and Lorenz Blaumer Music Mediation at Stegreif Without a conductor, without sheet music or chairs: Stegreif demonstrates new ways of what a modern orchestra can look like. In radical recompositions, the group combines symphonic music with improvisation and influences from other genres, and integrates the audience in a unique auditory and spatial exploration. Using these innovative …
On Participatory Devising Processes in Opera and the Courage to Fill Gaps Krysztina Winkel Intro: Get Up and Go Receiving, discussing, and co-creating music theatre and dance, combined with the curiosity to initiate individual, societal, and organisational transformation processes (even if only on a microcosmic level), forms the core of the outreach work at the Vienna State Opera. Since …
A Conversation with Djanay Tulenova, Avri Levitan, and Johannes Meissl Axel Petri-Preis In her book Journeys of Lifelong Learning in Music, Rineke Smilde describes how musicians who play in various, sometimes new and unfamiliar, social contexts reflect on their artistic identity and how experiences from these musical practices also influence performances in conventional concert settings (Smilde 2021, 200). According …
Systems Learning through Counter-Stories of Finnish Socially Engaged Musicians Heidi Westerlund and Sari Karttunen Introduction Despite increasingly critical voices (e.g. Westerlund 2006; Hallam and Gaunt 2012; Holmgren 2020; Manternach 2024), the master-apprentice model continues to be the main pedagogical model in higher music education. While securing the sustainability of such tradition, it also provides a model par excellence of …
A Conversation with Lydia Grün, Ulrike Sych, and Sean Gregory Sarah Chaker and Axel Petri-Preis The music labour market has undergone extensive changes in recent decades – this is especially true for the classical music sector (Bork 2010; Engelmann, Grünewald, and Heinrich 2012; Scharff 2018; Bull 2019; Whitney, Rowley, and Bennett 2021; Prokop and Reitsamer 2023). A growing number …
Students’ Perspectives on the Master’s Programme Contemporary Arts Practice (CAP) Axel Petri-Preis Introduction Conservatories emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Bennett 2016, 59) as places where young individuals are educated for a career in classical music under the auspices of the highest artistic excellence. Traditionally, the main focus has been on developing mastery on the instrument …
