The first seeds for the project “PRIhME – Power Relations in Higher Music Education” were planted at the AEC – European Association of Conservatoires annual congress in Turino in 2019. It is thus just fitting that we returned to Italy for the launch of PRIhME’s final intellectual output as our book “Music, power relations, and beyond: critical positions in Higher Music Education” was called in the Erasmus+ grant application. In a very well visited session during the AEC annual congress in Milano yesterday Itziar Larrinaga Cuadra, Lucia DiCecca and I presented the book. Gretchen Amussen then wrapped up the session with some reflections on the implementation of the PRIhME recommendations which the AEC general assembly adopted in 2023.
The book’s structure reflects the overarching topics of the four stakeholder assemblies (what is power/ are power relations in Higher Music Education, gender and sexuality, socio-economic background and moving to action). In addition to the expert briefs from each assembly each part includes contributions reflecting on different aspects of power relations from the perspective of students, teachers, musicians and senior management. The parts also each include 3 central keywords. While the book can be read from cover to cover our intention is that it can also be used as a reference book picking certain relevant sections to be used in workshops.
As in any book project this book would not have been completed without the help from many people. First of all and most importantly I would like to thank my co-editors Christa Brüstle, Lucia DiCecca, Itziar Larrinaga, Mojca Piškor and Eva Sæther for their hard work which included bringing in interesting and relevant authors, editing the contributions as well as authoring their own contributions. A big thanks also goes to the authors Deborah Kelleher, Anna Bull, Vanessa Gardebien, Basilio Fernández Morante, Unni Løvlid, Cecilia Ferm-Almqvist, Ann Werner, Susanna Stivali, Clara Sersale, Si Sophie Pages Whybrew, Kirsten Lies-Warfield, Sam de Boise, Shzr Ee Tan, Franca Ferrari, Marko Kölbl, Alexandra Kertz-Welzel, Antje Krischning, Pär Moberg, Gerd Grupe, Julia Wieneke, Anna Houmann and Patrick Schmidt who brought in important and diverse insights to power relations. I would also like to express my gratitude to our AEC coordinators Ashkhen Fixova, Barbara Lalić, our three translators Ronya Krieger, Andrew Smith and Jessica Weiss, our fabulous language editor Mimi Harmer as well as our publisher Musikene for overseeing the peer review process and publishing the book.
Brüstle, Christa, Di Cecca, Lucia; Larrinaga, Itziar; Piškor, Mojca; Sæther, Eva and David-Emil Wickström (eds.): “Music, Power Relations and Beyond: Critical Positions in Higher Music Education”, Musikene (Donostia-San Sebastián) 2024
Enough from me, now it is time for you to take action and read the book! Grab your digital copy here:
https://musikene.eus/prihme/?lang=en