The two volumes on Music Performers’ Lived Experiences seeks to widen this research area through close investigations of a variety of rich, complex and nuanced experiences classical music performers have qua performers, as they interact with musical scores, instruments, performance traditions, other musicking individuals, wider artistic and cultural discourses, norms and beliefs.

The two volumes aim to “humanise” music performers and contribute towards shaping a more performer-centred discipline of Music Performance Studies. The first volume, Music Performers’ Lived Experiences: Theory, Method, Interpretation, brings together internationally renowned scholars, who capture and scrutinise, through a variety of methods, a wide range of experiences performers have—as well as the personally meaningful lived experience narratives performers construct—presenting vivid portraits of music performers as artists situated in unique socio-cultural, historical, embodied and discursive contexts. The topics discussed include the construction of the idea of “the composer” from lived experiences of performing, manifestations of wisdom in the ways performers make sense of their experiences, joys of sight-reading, performer agency, lived experience as the basis of performance analysis, emotional labour of working with controversial repertoire, performance anxiety dreams of music performers, experience of working across musical genres, the nature of intersubjective experiences in music-making, absorption, and subjective bodily sensations in performance.

Readers will come away from the book with fresh insights about and an enhanced understanding of the infinitely rich lifeworld of music performers.