“It’s festival time again”: Sounding Tensions with/in an A/R/Tographical Inquiry into Participation in Competition Music Festivals

Abstract

Reflecting on my musical past, my annual participation in competition music festivals in solo and ensemble categories at the local and provincial levels shaped my music education as well as my development as a music educator. I inquire into how re/visiting moments of tension in my lived experiences as a participant in competition music festivals can facilitate my current praxis as artist, researcher and teacher. My inquiry is informed by understandings of a/r/tography as an arts-based educational research methodology. I inquire into these sites of music-making drawing on a theoretical framework of a soundscape, a concept originally proposed by Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, to generate rhizomatic pathways with/in my research. Through this framework I consider how musical form informs the processes and structures of my thesis. Emphasizing a/r/tography as process-oriented inquiry, understandings emerge through music-making, arts-based journaling and autoethnographic renderings. Rhizomatic soundscapes evoke new understandings and questions contributing to literature on student perspectives participating in competition music festivals and teaching and learning in one-to-one music instruction.