Transitioning to Career: Talented Musicians’ Identity Development

Abstract

Students who are actively involved in developing an understanding of their individual sense of self as a musician, whilst engaged in their formal tertiary music studies, are more successful than others in their future careers (Bennett D, Rowley J, Dunbar-Hall P, Hitchcock M, Blom D, J Furth High Educ 40:107–124, 2016). However, formal studies often do not lead to a deep understanding of the potential professional world that is required of musicians across their career lifespan. Musician identity is a complex notion that comprises a sense of self or becoming. Talent development and musician identity are multifaceted ideas that may be understood from theoretical and practical perspectives and the intersection between the two will be explored in this chapter. To understand the manner in which talent development and musical identity are developed in practice, a lens of the Comprehensive Model of Talent Development or CMTD is used (Gagné F, McPherson G, Analyzing musical prodigiousness using Gagné’s Integrative Model of Talent Development. In: McPherson GE (ed) Musical prodigies: interpretations from psychology, education, musicology and ethnomusicology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 3–114. Oxford Scholarship Online. ISBN-13: 9780199685851, 2016). Talent development for musicians, and musician identity are aspects that evolve out of the study across a musician’s career lifespan. How music students experience the space between formal music study and work experiences and how, in turn, thinking is transformed accordingly for the development of a future work-ready career professional can impact curriculum design in higher education. Professional musicians’ identity development will be explored by reporting how talent development is understood through a mentoring program and what musician identity means from the perspective of self-reflections of ten final year music students undertaking an internship placement. The theoretical paradigm of the focus in the chapter is housed within the sense of self model (Rowley J, Munday J, Int J Humanit Soc Sci Educ (IJHSSE) 1:78–85, 2014). Following this discussion, how career transition is perceived through the work experience of students will be reiterated. Student responses show that those who re-imagine what their musical world means and how their own capabilities, talents, gifts and creativity can be utilised as leaders in the professional practice context are more successful.