Book excerpt: This book sets out a contemporary perspective on music education, highlighting complex intersections between informal, non-formal and formal practices and contexts. At a time when the boundaries between music learning and participation are increasingly blurred, this volume is distinctive in challenging a ‘siloed’ approach to understanding the diverse international music education landscape. Instead, the book proposes a multi-layered continuum of practices that can be applied across a range of formal, informal or non-formal concepts to support the development of musical possible selves. It challenges existing conceptions of learning in music education in part by drawing on research in adult learning, but also by considering the contexts in which learning takes place, and the extent to which this learning can be classified as formal, informal or non-formal.