Music performance anxiety beyond coping: toward a creative arts perspective in higher music education

Music performance anxiety (MPA) remains a common challenge in higher music education, affecting performance quality, student confidence, and long-term wellbeing. While existing approaches have provided important tools for symptom reduction and coping, a primarily clinical or management-oriented focus may overlook how MPA is experienced within musical learning. This article develops a conceptual framework that brings together MPA research, higher music education scholarship, and creative arts-informed thinking, reframing MPA not only as a condition to be managed, but as an experience that can be explored through creative and reflective processes. The framework comprises four interrelated pedagogical processes: embodied awareness, expressive exploration, relational witnessing, and reflective meaning-making. By shifting the focus from management to meaningful engagement, the article contributes a pedagogical framework for rethinking MPA support in higher music education and establishes a conceptual foundation for future workshop development within students' musical learning and wellbeing.