This article addresses the question of whether higher education music courses adequately prepare young musicians for the critical transition from music undergraduate to professional. Thematic analyses of interviews with 27 undergraduate and portfolio career musicians representing four musical genres were compared. The evidence suggests that the process of transition into professional life for musicians across the four focus genres may be facilitated when higher education experiences include mentoring that continues after graduation, the development of strong multi-genre peer networks, the provision of many and varied performance opportunities and support for developing self-discipline and autonomy in relation to the acquisition of musical expertise. Implications for higher education curricula are discussed.

The Investigating Musical Performance: Comparative Studies in Advanced Musical Learning research project was devised to investigate how classical, popular, jazz and Scottish traditional musicians deepen and develop their learning about performance in undergraduate, postgraduate and wider music community contexts. The aim of this paper is to explore the findings relating to attitudes towards the importance of musical skills, the relevance of musical activities and the nature of musical expertise. Questionnaire data obtained from the first phase of data collection (n=244) produced evidence of differences and similarities between classical and non-classical musicians. While classical musicians emphasized the drive to excel musically and technically and prioritized notation-based skills and analytical skills, non-classical musicians attached greater importance to memorising and improvising. Regardless of genre, the musicians all considered practical activities such as practising, rehearsing, taking lessons and giving performances to be relevant. However, whilst classical musicians attached greater relevance to giving lessons and solo performances, their non-classical colleagues considered making music for fun and listening to music within their own genre to be more relevant. Some underlying processes that may have accounted for the differences in attitudes are explored, including musical influences, age of initial engagement with music and educational background. Points of similarity and differences are discussed, and possibilities for the two musical trajectories to inform and learn from each other are highlighted.

This paper, following on from our previous paper focusing on findings regarding students' approaches to learning, explores students' approaches to performance with particular focus on musical self-efficacy beliefs and experiences of performance anxiety in solo and group performances. The research design included a large questionnaire survey followed up by 13 case study interviews and six focus groups. Survey participants were 170 undergraduate musicians studying in three distinctively different higher education institutions, encompassing classical, popular, jazz and Scottish traditional music genres. Findings suggest that the context of music performance learning and the prevailing institutional culture relate to students' approaches to performance. By statistically controlling for gender and genre biases across the three institutions, we were able to observe both similarities and differences between students' self-reported self-efficacy beliefs, as well as experiences, perceived causes and strategies used to cope with performance anxiety. Implications of findings from the two 'institutional culture and learning' papers for learners and educators in higher education are discussed.

Educational and psychological research suggests that gender and musical genre can influence musical learning and the development of musical identities, particularly during adolescence. However, there is a relative paucity of educational studies in higher education (HE) concerning the possible impact on musical learning of gender and musical genre, either individually or collectively. As part of a two-year comparative study funded under the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)'s Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) that is focused on musical learning in HE, we investigated the effect of musicians' gender and chosen musical performance genre (embracing Western classical, jazz, popular, and Scottish traditional music) on undergraduate and postgraduate (career-based) learning. Data were gathered through a web-based survey of participants (n=244) drawn from four HE institutions (HEIs) in Glasgow, York, Leeds and London and the wider workplace, supplemented by semistructured case study interview data from a sub-set (n=27) of these participants. Statistical and qualitative analyses indicate that gender and genre can impact individually on some aspects of participants' psychological and socio-psychological make-up and in their attitudes to learning. However, there was no evidence statistically or qualitatively of any major interaction between the variables of genre and gender in the data from the chosen measures. Furthermore, irrespective of musical genre, skilled musicians had many aspects in common in terms of their core musical identities and behaviours, implying that the requirements for highly skilled musical performance can transcend particular group characteristics.

Psychology of Music 38 (1) Finally, characteristics that predict and account for variability in musicians' views and attitudes regarding musical expertise and self-assessments of personal expertise levels are highlighted. Results are viewed in the context of music learning and implications for music education are discussed. k e y w o r d s : expertise development, gender, musical genre, musical performance, skill acquisition