Explores how music can promote mental health and functioning in diverse settings, from supporting cognitive development in premature babies to establishing identity and emotional well-being in adolescents, to enhancing brain function in adults and challenging cognitive decline in dementia patients.

This book sets out a contemporary perspective on music education, highlighting complex intersections between informal, non-formal and formal practices and contexts. At a time when the boundaries between music learning and participation are increasingly blurred, this volume is distinctive in challenging a ‘siloed’ approach to understanding the diverse international music education landscape. Instead, the book proposes a multi-layered continuum of practices that can be applied across a range of formal, informal or non-formal concepts to support the development of musical possible selves. It challenges existing conceptions of learning in music education in part by drawing on research in adult learning, but also by considering the contexts in which learning takes place, and the extent to which this learning can be classified as formal, informal or non-formal.

This book examines contemporary issues in music teaching and learning throughout the lifespan, illuminating an emerging nexus of trends shaping modern research in music education. In the past, most music learning opportunities and research were focused upon the pre-adult population. Yet, music education occurs throughout the lifespan, from birth until death, emerging not only through traditional formal ensembles and courses, but increasingly through informal settings as well. This book challenges previous assumptions in music education and offers theoretical perspectives that can guide contemporary research and practice. Exploring music teaching and learning practices through the lens of human development, sections highlight recent research on topics that shape music learning trajectories. Themes uniting the book include human development, assessment strategies, technological applications, professional practices, and cultural understanding. The volume deconstructs and reformulates performance ensembles to foster mutually rewarding collaborations across miles and generations. It develops new measures and strategies for assessment practices for professionals as well as frameworks for guiding students to employ effective strategies for self-assessment. Supplemental critical thinking questions focus the reader on research applications and provide insight into future research topics. This volume joining established experts and emerging scholars at the forefront of this multifaceted frontier is essential reading for educators, researchers, and scholars, who will make the promises of the 21st century a reality in music education. It will be of interest to a range of fields including music therapy, lifelong learning, adult learning, human development, community music, psychology of music, and research design.

Evgeny Kissin is an internationally renowned classical pianist admired for his interpretations of the repertoires of Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, and Prokofiev. The intensity of Kissin's thinking animates this candid memoir, illuminating his astonishing memory, his fondness for his family and teachers, and his artistic sense of self. Memoirs and Reflections chronicles Kissin's musical education and his early career. His writing is infused with his lifelong engagement with music: an obsessive love that captured, challenged, and nurtured him from a young age. He recounts fortuitous events and serendipitous encounters with remarkable musicians and conductors, including Herbert von Karajan. This book shows Kissin to be surprisingly modest and down-to-earth in spite of his astonishing gift. He writes of his family and friends with tender affection and touching detail. Reading this intimate memoir is like having a private audience with the great pianist himself.

The new edition of The Child as Musician: A Handbook of Musical Development celebrates the richness and diversity of the many different ways in which children can engage in and interact with music. It presents theory - both cutting edge and classic - in an accessible way for readers by surveying research concerned with the development and acquisition of musical skills. The focus is on musical development from conception to late adolescences, although the bulk of the coverage concentrates on the period when children are able to begin formal music instruction (from around age 3) until the final year of formal schooling (around age 18). There are many conceptions of how musical development might take place, just as there are for other disciplines and areas of human potential. Consequently, the publication highlights the diversity in current literature dealing with how we think about and conceptualise children's musical development. Each of the authors has searched for a better and more effective way to explain in their own words and according to their own perspective, the remarkable ways in which children engage with music. In the field of educational psychology there are a number of publications that survey the issues surrounding child and adolescent development. Some of the more innovative present research and theories, and their educational implications, in a style that stresses the fundamental interplay among the biological, environmental, social and cultural influences at each stage of a child's development. Until now, no similar overview has existed for child and adolescent development in the field of music. The Child as Musician addresses this imbalance, and is essential for those in the fields of child development, music education, and music cognition.

Pitts investigates the long term aims, impact and effects of music education in a school setting. Evaluating the extent to which school music provides a foundation for lifelong involvement in music, Pitts integrates empirical data with a review of historical and contemporary debates on the practices of music teaching and learning.

The new edition of 'The Child as Musician' celebrates the richness and diversity of the many different ways in which children can engage in and interact with music. It presents theory - both cutting edge and classic - in an accessible way for readers by surveying research concerned with the development and acquisition of musical skills.