As we step into a new year, we hope that 2025 brought moments of inspiration, creativity, and meaningful progress for each of you. While the year behind us offered reasons for optimism, it also reminded us of the challenges shaping our world today: growing divisions, the closing of minds and borders, and the increasing influence of technologies that can distort understanding as easily as they can connect us.

In this dystopian context, our role as creators, thinkers, educators, and researchers is more important than ever. Our work has the power to clarify rather than confuse, to open dialogue rather than deepen divides, and to offer thoughtful responses to complex global realities.

Through constructive dialogue, we strive to listen carefully to one another and to the world around us. It is through this listening that understanding emerges, and with it, the possibility of meaningful and sustainable solutions.

Our creative and academic endeavours should stand as a reminder that we inhabit a world built on connection, critical thought, and the possibility of sustainable progress.

As such, this volume of PULSE is once again a testament to the creative and resilient minds of musical researchers in the Southeast Asian region, this time featuring contributions from the Philippines and Sri Lanka, as well as Thailand and Malaysia. This volume welcomes reflections across a wide variety of music-related practices, with a special focus on pedagogical innovation and contextual adaptations.

Rey Sunglao examines, through the lenses of Filipino resilience and bayanihan, how the Manila Symphony Orchestra survived and adapted through World War II and the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating how core Filipino values, key individuals, and innovative responses have sustained the orchestra across generations.

Panicha Ponprasit, Napatsawan Ruamsap, Sirathee Maiwong and Juthatip Wiwattanapantuwong examine six early-adulthood musicians and finds that musical experiences shape self-identity through the development of musical self-clarity, support from others, perceived value in musical work, and music’s role in coping with difficult times.

Andrew Jaye Ocampo’s study is the first to investigate community rondalla pedagogy in the Philippines through digital ethnography, revealing how three community rondalla groups apply content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge in practice, while highlighting the crucial role of local government funding in sustaining groups and promoting Filipino culture.

Kylie Tan investigates the reception history and evolving interpretations of Miklós Rózsa’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, examining how performers, stylistic approaches, performance challenges, and historical context have shaped its legacy and limited mainstream presence, while arguing for its artistic significance and potential for renewed scholarly and performative interest.

Jirut Khamlanghan distils nineteenth-century bel canto vocal pedagogy into an accessible contemporary framework through the analysis of selected soprano arias by Bellini and Donizetti, culminating in a public performance that demonstrates and revitalises these techniques for modern audiences.

P. B. S. L. Pushpakumara and Rashmi Senevirathne employ mixed methodologies to demonstrate that arts-based learning, particularly through music and drama, enhances first-year Sri Lankan university students’ motivation, participation, and authentic English use by creating a low-anxiety, inclusive classroom environment that supports diverse learning styles and learner-centred ESL pedagogy.

We hope you enjoy reading through our pages and, as always, we look forward to hearing from you in the year ahead.

The Pulse Editorial Team