ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the collaboration took place between four piano students: one who had just started her bachelor studies, one who was in the middle of her master's studies and two who were finishing their master's studies, preparing for the final exam in solo performance. It aims to provide a space where it would be safe for the students to open up their learning processes to each other and freely experiment with a variety of musical and pianistic solutions. Collaborative learning thus opened the space both for individual artistic development and for the development of understanding about formal assessment of piano performance more generally. Assessment is a natural and essential part of teaching and learning in higher music education. It is also an emotive process, raising strong emotions in teachers and students alike. The students' active engagement in the collaborative work to develop the matrices demonstrated that they found the quite inspiring.
