Music is a fundamental form of human communication. Although many of us make music for pleasure alone in the privacy of our own homes, music experiences most often involve performers and listeners. Intelligent performers consider musical intentions in terms how listeners will hear and interpret the music they make. Thinking about music in this way defines expressive goals for performers at all levels of experience and expertise.

Bob Duke is the Marlene and Morton Meyerson Centennial Professor and Head of Music and Human Learning at The University of Texas at Austin, where he is University and University of Texas System Distinguished Teaching Professor, Director of the Center for Music Learning, and Clinical Professor in the Dell Medical School. For the past six years, he directed the psychology of learning program at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles.

All musicians have to practice, throughout their professional life-time. This can be an extremely demanding and tiring activity, eventually leading to frustration and burn-out. Creativity in practice can prevent these dangers to musicians’s health. I will describe ways to enrich „boring“ practice and present a „holistic“ model, accounting for the benefits of creative practice and stimulating ideas for further development and growth.

Eckart Altenmüller (b. 1955) holds a Master´s degree in Classical flute, and a MD and PhD degree in Neurology and Neurophysiology. Since 1994 he is chair and director of the Institute of Music Physiology and Musicians’ Medicine at the HMTM Hanover. He continues research into movement disorders in musicians as well as into motor, auditory, and sensory learning and emotions and directs an outpatient clinic for musicians. In the year 2013 he received the prestigious Science Award of the Country of Lower Saxony.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is not only a common saying, it’s also the mindset of many musicians and athletes. So, when creative – also referred to as “crazy” – strategies come around, they are often ignored or marginalized instead of embraced. To explore training for creative excellence, a cross-disciplinary exchange took place to challenge the norm of practice methods in sports and music. Alternative training strategies can solidify past learning, while opening up pathways to further capabilities. Well-learned skills can be stretched, adding more flexibility and creativity.

Holger Geschwindner was born in 1945 and started playing first division basketball when he was a teenager. He has won several championships and captained the German basketball team at the 1972 Olympics. During his playing days, he studied mathematics and physics, read philosophy and literature, and travelled the world. He worked for the Max-Planck-Institute of Psychiatry, built mill wheels in Bamberg, raised a pig named Bruno, saved a pecan nut farm in Mississippi, and hunted wolves around Mount Ararat. Geschwindner has been working with Dirk Nowitzki since 1995. He heads the "Institute for Applied Nonsense" where he still tries to reconcile sports with music and mathematics, physics, philosophy, and psychology.

Ernest Butler born in 1934 in Connersville, Indiana, began playing basketball and listening to jazz before he was in kindergarten. These two subjects have remained centers of interest throughout his life. After graduating Ball State (B.S.) and USC (M.S.), he began a teaching/coaching career in 1956 which continues today. His teaching spanned from elementary through university education levels while coaching from junior high through professional basketball. As his active basketball playing career began to wane, he began playing jazz saxophone. While playing basketball at Giessen he befriended Holger Geschwindner and they began developing the basketball is jazz concept.

We tend to think creativity is more at home in the performing arts than elsewhere. And yet, classical musicians are careful not to challenge rigid traditions and authority-invested figures, thereby potentially impeding progress. We rarely think of creativity and critical thinking as overlapping concepts and yet they are both components of purposeful thinking. After all, innovative ideas have to stand the test of rigorous judgment. Similarly, although evidence on various health-related problems musicians might suffer from is mounting, we are slow and somewhat resistant when it comes to adjusting educational guidelines and practices according to the best available evidence and in a systematic manner.

Professor Jane Ginsborg, Associate Director of Research at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, UK, won the British Voice Association’s Van Lawrence Award in 2002 and was shortlisted for a Times Higher Education award in 2013 for research on singers’ memorizing strategies and musicians with hearing impairments, respectively. She has published widely on expert musical performance and, latterly, musicians’ health and wellbeing. Managing Editor of Music Performance Research, she also fulfills editorial responsibilities for Musicae Scientiae, Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies, Psychology of Music and Performance Science (Frontiers in Psychology). Between 2012 and 2015 she was President of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music.

Raluca Matei is currently an AHRC-funded final year PhD student in Psychology, with a focus on health promotion among musicians, at the Royal Northern College of Music, in Manchester, UK, under the main supervision of Prof Jane Ginsborg. She was trained as a violinist and has a Master’s in Health Psychology from University College London. Her interdisciplinary projects received both the Research Seminar Grant and the Public Engagement Award from the British Psychological Society, in 2015. Having a strong interest in critical thinking, Raluca was funded to organize the first event on critical thinking and health education in musicians’ training, in November 2017. 

Liberating the creative and natural capabilities in performance, how? This talk will present recent findings, theory and applications on how performing artists and musicians peak their performance through accepting the worst possible outcome.

Johannes L. Hatfield is one of Norway’s leading experts on deliberate practice and performance psychology. He has wide experience as a musician (cello), pedagogue, and researcher. Johannes` main research is deliberate practice, self-regulated learning and performance psychology. Currently Johannes is working on a research project that aims at developing virtual reality solutions as part of practice laboratory for musicians at The Academy of Music. Johannes holds multiple workshops, lectures, and talks for a wide selection of audiences. Johannes also closely collaborates and consults some of tomorrows most promising classical musicians, dancers, actors, athletes, and film directors in Norway. In addition to such workshops, Johannes frequently holds lectures, talks, and workshops for teachers, pedagogues and the private sector.

Ask musicians exactly where and how creativity takes place in their musical activity, and you will often get evasive answers. "I play Beethoven, and this, of course, requires creativity." "I improvise, that's creative." These show that knowledge about one's own creativity is lacking. However, creativity can be understood and promoted. And that pays off, as can be seen in the economy, as well as heard in music.

Born in 1969 in Bonn (Germany), Andreas Kissenbeck studied mathematics, sports, and education science at the universities in Berlin und Regensburg. Then scholarship and studies in jazz piano at the University of Music Würzburg. Later PhD in musicology at the University of Würzburg. Pianist/Hammond organist, composer and arranger. 2002 Jazz Price of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. In 2006 he received the Next Generation Award of Germany’s jazz magazine, Jazz Thing. 2018 nominated for the BMW world jazz award. Played internationally with renowned artists such as Malcolm Duncan, John Marshall, Benny Bailey, Bobby Shew, Jiggs Whigham, Till Brönner, Tony Lakatos, Peter Weniger, among many others.

This presentation surveys over 20 years of research on teaching strategies and approaches within education in addition to studies the presenter has undertaken dealing with instrumental and vocal teaching at all levels. It will provide delegates with a range of teaching mindframes that have been shown to be successful in a range of learning settings, and emphasize approaches that research suggests make the most gains in learning and motivation.

Gary E. McPherson is the Ormond Professor and Director of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, at the University of Melbourne in Australia. A prolific author and researcher, he has published over 200 refereed articles and book chapters and produced 11 authored and co-authored books. Gary’s research covers a range of topics in music education and music performance science, with an emphasis on motivation and teaching interactions at all levels of skill development.

Moving is an essential part in creative performance. Motions contain not only necessary movements to execute the performance, i.e. producing sounds on an instrument, they also transmit expressive and personal intents. The habit of performing motions while playing an instrument can be rather individual. There are, however, certain commonalities of motion behavior. In this talk, I provide a theoretical framework of motions in creative performance and show results of studies on motion analysis of clarinet players.

Manfred Nusseck is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Musician’s Medicine (FIM) and the University of Music Freiburg within the Freiburg Research and Teaching Center for Music (Freiburger Forschungs- und Lehrzentrum Musik). He is working in the field of music physiology and musician’s medicine. He has a teaching degree for schools from the University of Music Hamburg for music and physics subjects. He did his dissertation thesis in neuro and cognitive sciences at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics (Department of Human Perception, Cognition and Action) in Tübingen.

Engaging as a performing artist or athlete may buffer the negative effects of childhood adversity. Optimal performance, also known as a state of flow, is a potential for all who participate in activities that provide meaning, value, and purpose. Substantial childhood adversity does not change this outcome.

Paula Thomson , PsyD, is Professor in the Department of Kinesiology, California State University, Northridge (CSUN). She is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and works in private practice in California. She is Co-Director of the Performance Psychophysiology Laboratory at CSUN, adjunct faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute, OperaWorks faculty, Professor Emeritus at York University’s Departments of Theatre and Graduate Studies (Canada). She was a professional dancer and continues work as a choreographer and movement coach in dance, theatre and opera. Past professional choreographic company work includes Canadian Opera Company, Canadian Stage Company, Stratford Shakespearean Festival, Northern Lights Dance Theatre, Ballet Jorgen, and UCLA On the Edge of Chaos. In 2013, she was named one of the top 20 female professors in California.