New books and book reviews
B O O K R E V I E W
Music schools in changing societies: how collaborative professionalism can transform music education edited by Michaela Hahn, Cecilia Björk and Heidi Westerlund, New York, Routledge, 2024, 234pp. $35 (ebook). ISBN:9781003365808 (ebk) doi:10.1017/S0265051725100612
"Society transformation is a priority for many governments, civil society and institutions. Amidst this ongoing discourse, music schools grapple with challenges within the broader spatial, sociocultural and institutional contexts. However, the book Music Schools in Changing Societies offers hope. It views music education through collaboration, particularly in the European context. By examining how collaborative professionalism in European music schools transforms the educational landscape through public funds and cultural systems, Michaela Hahn, Cecelia Björk and Heidi Westerlund’s book presents a promising assessment of multilevel collaboration. This analytical task, a vital part of the school and music educators’ work, addresses societal concerns, paving the way for better futures and pathways for new approaches and practices...."
Book review by Wolfgang W. Müller, professorship of dogmatic theology at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland) in Reading Religion, A Publication of the American Academy of Religion.
https://readingreligion.org/books/music-education-and-religion
...."The book serves as a study volume for all those who are active in this field and provides both systematic reflections and useful empirical studies. A further impressive feature is the regional and religious breadth of the content presented and examined."
Book review by William M. Perrine (Concordia University, Ann Arbor) in Philosophy of Music Education Review 29, no. 1 (Spring 2021), pp. 117–122. doi:10.2979/philmusieducrevi.29.1.0
"...editors Alexis Kallio, Philip Alperson, and Heidi Westerlund have put together an impressive volume that treats the complex relationship between music education and religious practice with the respect and sensitivity that the topic deserves. As the editors note in their introduction, music as a human practice cannot be artificially separated from religious beliefs. These domains are, as the volume’s subtitle makes clear, entangled through a multiplicity of intersections."
Book review by Justin Krueger (NCTM, Menasha, Wisconsin) in American Music Teacher 2020, Vol.70 (2), p. 35-35.
..."this book would undoubtedly be of interest to anyone who is interested in music within the larger context of inter-disciplinary study, anyone who has struggled with the compartmentalization of music, religion and/or education, or anyone who wants to gain a broader perspective on the ways in which the future of music education can be a force for good in our society."
Book review by Brad Fuller in Music Education Research of The Politics of Diversity in Music Education.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2021.1955846
...."Returning to the introductory chapter, this book is indeed at once troubling and inspiring, because it continually provokes the conscience by asking ‘how can we engage ethically with the politics of diversity when we ourselves are complicit in existing inequities and injustices?’(5). To paraphrase John Lennon, nobody told us there’d be days like these, and we need more books like this for days like these."
