Considered one of the few forums concerning research relating to the overall topic of teaching musical instruments in today’s world in view of the future, the VI STMI – Symposium on the Paradigms of Teaching Musical Instruments in the 21st Century returns in this edition to Portugal after the V STMI being held in Brazil.

After 10 years, and having as previous keynotes Maravillas Diaz, Lucy Green, Pam Burnard, and Jane Ginsborg, the relevance of STMI continues to be centred on the mismatch between what is taught in music and contemporary production. A good example of this is generally found in music education, and in particular the teaching of musical instruments. Many techniques, methods and repertoire which are used today for teaching an instrument are the same that were used over one hundred years ago. Conscious that music education institutions – as any institution – tend to react slowly to changes and progress of the overall music creation outside the academia, we need to constantly measure our educational tools, so that what we truly teach represents where we come from and prepares and envisions artistic possibilities for the future.

In order to discuss and contextualise these issues, this the VI STMI welcomes article presentations related to the topic of instrument teaching covering three broad chronological periods:

(1) an overview of the past, (2) the present, and (3) the future. Thus, for each of these chronological periods, work can be presented from different areas of research, such as: historical musicology, performance practice, composition/repertoire, pedagogy (e.g. methods and techniques; the teaching of ‘old’ or new instruments), ‘new musicology’ (e.g. gender studies and ‘new’ music styles; jazz, pop, world), and music technology.