Wellbeing in Professional Chamber Music Performance Contexts

Abstract

The factors influencing wellbeing for musicians, audience ­members, and concert venue staff in professional chamber music performance contexts are considered using exploratory data collected from a major Australian concert venue. Preliminary analysis of interview and survey data revealed a key topic of wellbeing, amongst other emergent themes. The wellbeing-relevant data were explored from a critical realist/contextualist approach using thematic analysis and directed qualitative content analysis. The data were also examined from the perspective of Martin Seligman’s PERMA model of wellbeing. Results indicate that in chamber music contexts, musician wellbeing was enhanced by a sense of meaning..