The purpose of the current study was to examine music performance anxiety and self-reported reasons for participation among members of older adult community bands. We asked 35 New Horizons Band members aged 65+ questions about their musical experience in face-to-face interviews, after which we administered two questionnaires: the Performance…

The four perspectives in this paper were first presented as an interactive research/workshop symposium at RIME 9. The purpose of the symposium was to connect new media scholar Henry Jenkins's theory of 'participatory culture' (1992, 2006, 2009) to possible practices of 'participatory culture' in diverse music teaching and learning contexts. We…

The purpose of this study was to investigate participant involvement in community wind bands through the lens of organizational theory to inform the music education profession about community wind bands as an "expressive" voluntary association with potential for lifelong participation. Twenty-eight informants were drawn from three…

We argue in this article for greater role for improvisation in the music classroom. Based on an extensive examination of scholarship about improvisational practices, we propose three conceptualizations--ability, culture, experience--that can serve to guide the teaching of improvisation. When considered as an "ability," improvisation is a…

Whereas adult education used to be the preferred concept for those studying adult music-making, there is now an increasing trend away from this and towards lifelong learning. Uncritically adopting government lifelong learning discourses, however, blurs the line between educational ideals and political ones. Although there may be merit in the…

This article serves to extend a critique initiated by Allsup and Benedict in their 2008 PMER article, "The Problems of Band." Using the work of Michael Foucault as a theoretical and methodological basis, I consider ways in which today's large ensemble paradigm, particularly that of the wind band, has resulted in an ongoing antinomy in…

The purpose of this paper is to discuss, utilising Miller's theoretical framework for social justice, findings of a research study examining the dramatic musical and educational results of an alternative music education programme in Toronto, Canada. What is particularly striking about the findings are the ways in which the participants (youth…