Dag Jansson

Oslo Metropolitan University · Oslo Business School

Musical leadership is associated with a specific profession–the conductor–as well as being a colloquial metaphor for human communication and cooperation at its best. This book examines what musical leadership is, by delving into the choral conductor role, what goes on in the music-making moment and what it takes to do it well. One of the unique fea...

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Norwegian authorities were determined to implement accurate measures against income losses. One year into the pandemic, we conducted a survey at Creo – Norwayʼs largest trade union of cultural workers. Compensation schemes were less congruent with the needs of those with multiple and precarious work arrangements. The...

Performing artists seem to remain in the culture sector despite the challenges with sustaining an artistic practice. Our research question is why the occupational commitment of the artistic precariat survives an external shock like the Covid-19 shutdown. We combined quantitative and qualitative survey data among performing artists in Norway (N = 60...

This study examines precariousness among cultural workers during an ongoing crisis. A survey of Norway's largest trade union for performing artists 1 year into the pandemic shows that precariousness before the pandemic was amplified during the crisis. Lack of economic buffer and social benefits rendered economic insecurity most burdensome for those...

Based on narratives on six choral conductors’ unfolding careers, the article investigates significant moments in professional trajectories – turning points – and how these shaped ongoing practices. The empirical material comprises interviews with conductors that represent different pre-conducting platforms – musicologist, music therapist, music edu...

Schools play a key role in the development of singing skills and promoting community singing among children and young people. Singing in Norwegian schools has gone from being a stand-alone subject to becoming increasingly marginalized, both in curricula and in actual use. Today’s teacher education barely addresses singing at all. Research shows tha...

This chapter explores how cultural workers in Norway coped with their work situation one month after the full lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which began on 12 March 2020. An online questionnaire with standardised as well as open-ended questions was distributed by email to members of Creo – Norway’s largest trade union for performing arti...

Curious as to why conducting gesture are both acknowledged and ignored by choral singers, this article investigates the enigmatic nature of the act of conducting. Education and research are biased toward gestural aspects of the choral conductor role. At the same time, research shows that gestural skills rank strikingly low compared with other music...

The topic of this paper is the relocation of a proven learning mechanism in a real-life working situation to a university setting. The aim is to discuss to what degree the types of learning generated in the original setting can survive the re-contextualisation and what might be done to retain as much value as possible. The original learning situati...

The notion of leadership competencies is a much-debated issue. In this article, we propose that how the leader makes sense of his or her competencies is key to leadership practice. Specifically, we look at how leaders reconcile discrepancies between the self-perceived proficiency of various competencies and their corresponding importance. Empirical...

Within higher education, programmes in choral conducting are offered of varying kinds and at different levels, from dedicated programmes to single courses that are embedded in other music programmes. The choral practice field is varied; choral leadership is partly a generic music competence and partly a profession. The variety and social reach of t...

Korsang har en fremtredende posisjon i Skandinavia. Alle de ulike korene som finnes – fra barnekor til seniorkor, fra hygge-kor til profesjonelle kor – trenger korledere. Korlederen må mestre et omfattende kompetansesett i det hun eller han virker som både musiker, leder og pedagog. Forfatterne har de siste årene gjennomført en rekke studier av kor...

The coronavirus pandemic hit the culture sector hard in Norway. In a highly uncertain situation, we conducted a survey of the members of Creo-Norway's largest union of performing artists. The respondents experience greater acute financial and job uncertainty than long-term uncertainty. The self-employed experience more uncertainty than those with r...

This paper examines the careers of artists and cultural workers who completed a one-year arts management graduate program. After the program, almost half of the participants were in positions with managerial responsibility, of which the majority combined artistic and administrative responsibility. The aim of the study was to fill a knowledge gap wi...

Choral singing is one of the most widespread musical activities, and choral conductors work in a variety of social settings that involve every imaginable type of choir and musical genre. The conductor role draws on a number of skills and competencies that are partly acquired through education but, equally importantly, through experience. Choral con...

Arts-based interventions may expand how team members and leaders understand their roles and impact. For an intervention to be useful, there needs to be a way for the aesthetic experience to translate back into the regular organisation. Nine managers of a professional services firm, including the chief executive, engaged in weekly group singing sess...

Choral conducting is a complex and multi-faceted leader role. Leading music is a particular kind of leadership through the prominence of gestural communication, and it is a ubiquitous phenomenon across a variety of social settings, musical genres, and ensemble types. Despite the variety, colloquial writing as well as academic research implicitly as...

The purpose of this study was to investigate a broad range of choral conductors’ views on competences needed in their own practice, and how education and experience have contributed to their current level of mastery. Choral conductors (N = 685) in Norway, Sweden, and Germany completed a survey covering 15 competence items that together constitute a...

This chapter is about musical leadership and specifically the role of the choral conductor. The conductor role is familiar to anyone who has sung in a school choir or has been in the audience of live or televized concerts. The role is prominent in concert programs and is asso- ciated with ensembles whenever they are profiled or critiqued. The prese...

Organisations evolve and leadership processes unfold in time. However, the role of temporality has traditionally been a wanting aspect of leadership theory. The concept of sensemaking in organisations does take time into account through two of its properties. First, sensemaking is assumed to be ongoing, with no clear beginnings or ends. Second, it...

Arts-based interventions expand how team members and leaders understand their roles and impact. Scholars take interest both in what type of insight might be generated and the nature of the learning process. For an intervention to be useful, there needs to be a way for the arts-based experience to translate back into the regular organisation. The re...

The choral movement holds a prominent position in the Nordic countries, and choral singing is one of the top social activities in terms of the number of people involved. While all these choirs need conductors and depend on choral leadership competence, we have limited knowledge of the existence and level of available competence, qualitatively or qu...

The topic of this article is the emerging trend of singing at work. The discussion is exemplified by results from case studies of singing interventions carried out at two different work places. The research comprised group interviews, participant observation and questionnaires. Our phenomenological and hermeneutic approach focuses mainly on the emp...

The conductor role has only been researched to a limited degree. Even less attention has been given to the impact view: how choral singers perceive the conductor’s role and how musical leadership is experienced by those who produce the sounding music. This chapter investigates these questions with a qualitative approach to understanding the lived e...

The article discusses ways to model the encounter between conductor and singers. Three different perspectives are offered; the legitimacy model (why we need a conductor), the enactment model (how to do it well), and the notion of elusive perfection (how the conductor faces a continuous balancing act).