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This article explores the meaning of lifelong learning for professional musicians. It identifies three interrelated incentives that serve as anchors for musicians' self-identity throughout their lives: informal music-making; improvisation; and high-quality performance. It discusses how institutions and teachers can facilitate attitudes and capacities for lifelong learning. It concludes with recommendations for implementing lifelong learning in the education of professional musicians.

This essay addresses the relationship of improvisation and identity. Biographical research that was conducted by the author into professional musicians’ lifelong learning showed the huge importance of improvisation for personal expression. Musically, the concept of sound appeared to serve as a strong metaphor for identity. In addition, ethnographic research conducted as part of the project Music for Life in London, and published by Smilde, Page and Alheit in 2014, where musicians work in creative music workshops with people with dementia and their caregivers, shed light on the use of improvisation as an expression of the identity of ‘the other’ (i.e. the person with dementia). Sound again appeared to serve as a metaphor for identity. The essay draws on the work of George Herbert Mead on identity, which distinguishes between the personal ‘I’ and the social ‘Me’, and points out that both aspects are essential for the self. In this sense, improvisation can be conceived as a means of communication that connects the personal with the social. Furthermore, drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s Oneself as Another (1992), it is shown that this concept of improvisation in relation to personal and social identity may be transferred to forms of community engagement through music. However, despite its huge importance, improvisation is still often marginalised in specialist higher music education, particularly in conservatoires, and the essay finishes with a strong plea for conservatoires to take up their role in the midst of society and embed improvisation in the core of the curriculum.

This article considers four learning biographies from professional musicians. Each musician holds a different portfolio career and is from a different age category. The key questions I ask are: How does one learn as a musician?, What knowledge, attitudes, values and artistic skills are necessary to function effectively and creatively as a contemporary musician?, and What is the necessary framework of lifelong learning in music education? My findings are analysed in the light of lifelong learning for musicians with a focus toward teaching and learning.