Elder Music, Instrumental Music Performance and Affirmative Aging

Abstract

Elder Music, Instrumental Music Performance and Affirmative Aging is a Practice-led research project in Community Music performance. A phenomenological, autoethnographic critique of lived musical experience by a senior, former professional musician returning to an accomplished instrumental music performance practice after a playing hiatus of twenty-four years. Research that arose in response to this personal aesthetic process resulted in a performance-led community music investigation, detailing the journey of a musician returning to active performance, without claiming to be either unique or typical. It is both a chronicle articulating the incidence and benefice of later life music making and a report on how this experiential and artistic process involves many mature musicians. Qualitative artistic research revealing a context to the breadth of active involvement and commitment of older musicians, who are not only quantitatively significant and noteworthy in their numbers and musical influence, but in also reflecting the positive benefits of community music making within our society in promoting personal and collective wellness, vitality and social bonding through collegial expressions of abstract musical truth and beauty.