The R&D group “The Portfolio Musician” is rooted in the field of practice and explores how higher music education can prepare students for a multidisciplinary and sustainable music industry. We combine research, academic, and artistic development work to strengthen the relevance of education and to develop the musician’s role in society.

The group focuses on how higher music education can evolve to meet the needs of the portfolio musician – a performer with a multifaceted career in a diverse and ever-changing job market.

Our work is based on the emerging role of the portfolio musician, as described in NOU 2025:7 “Musikklandet” and elaborated in research literature such as “Musikerne, bransjen og samfunnet” (Røyseng et al., 2022) and Telemarksforskning’s report on higher music education “Poststudium” (Kleppe & Heian, 2025). The portfolio musician combines various roles – performer, educator, composer, arranger, producer, project manager, project maker and entrepreneur – and operates in a professional landscape characterized by flexibility, multiple competencies, and constantly shifting conditions.

The R&D group investigates how higher music education can be developed to meet these needs. In addition to research, this work includes academic development, artistic development, and practice-based exploration of the musician’s role in society. Education must reflect the complexity of the music industry and provide students with tools to build sustainable and meaningful careers. This includes competencies in areas such as entrepreneurship, technology, communication, societal understanding, and reflection within and around artistic practice.

The group’s work and findings will influence the further development and revision of courses and academic activities at NTNU’s Department of Music, both for performance programs in jazz and classical music and for the musicology program.

The R&D group is open to collaborations with PhD projects and master projects that want to explore the role and potential of the portfolio musician.

Current activities include:

• Research and academic development related to the relevance and diversity of education
• Development and testing of projects that support the portfolio musician’s (student’s) future career. Keywords could be hospital musicians, concerts in prisons and nursing homes, infrastructure of concerts, how to run small venues, how to reach new audiences
• Exploration of the concert format. Awareness of setting, audience loyalty, rituals, humour, identity, well-being
• Artistic development and practice-based exploration of working life as a portfolio musician
• Seminars and workshops with external stakeholders from the music industry, cultural sector, and public sector
• Seminars on thematic, methodological, research policy, or educational topics
• Dissemination and publication of research results and finds in scientific journals, professional forums, and popular science channels, as well as through artistic expressions and stage formats
• Interdisciplinary cooperation at NTNU
• Mapping of educational and career pathways for portfolio musicians
• Open seminars