Musical creativity is an essential skill in early childhood education (ECE), nurturing children’s artistic expression and supporting their cognitive and socio-emotional growth. Contemporary curriculum guidelines typically encourage ECE practitioners to design activities that incorporate three key components of musical creativity: exploration, improvisation, and creation. However, how practitioners conceptualize musical creativity, especially within Asian settings, remains unclear. Drawing on the theoretical taxonomies proposed by Campbell and Scott-Kassner (2019), this study aims to address this gap by investigating the alignment between theoretical and practical understandings of musical creativity among kindergarten teachers and principals in Hong Kong.We conducted interviews with 30 practitioners from local kindergartens, including 20 teachers and 10 principals working with children in K1-K3. First, we asked participants to provide a musical activity that fosters children’s creativity to gather insights into their practical understanding. Then, we invited them to explain why they considered the activity fostered children’s creativity to reflect their theoretical understanding. The data were analyzed through theory-driven and data-driven coding approaches, using MAXQDA Analytics Pro.The findings indicate a significant gap between practitioners’ theoretical and practical understandings. While practitioners often provide explanations utilizing language that corresponds with worldwide definitions of musical creativity (e.g., mentioning terminologies like exploration and creation), their proposed activities rarely reflect these components. Instead, most of their proposed activities referred to conventional practices, such as singing action songs or conducting rhythmic movements. These activities were teacher-directed and mainly used as tools for teaching other learning areas, rather than providing opportunities for creative expression and open-ended exploration. Additionally, some practitioners expressed challenges in giving clear examples of activities that encourage musical creativity, acknowledging that musical creativity was not commonly integrated into their teaching.We conclude that the disconnect between theoretical and practical understandings of musical creativity is shaped by contextual factors such as cultural expectations, limited training, large class sizes, and inflexible curricula. To address this gap, professional development providers and researchers should encourage practitioners to conduct activities beyond singing action songs by sharing examples of creative music teaching practices, involving components of exploration, improvisation, and creation, and tailoring them to the realities of local classrooms to equip practitioners with feasible strategies to foster musical creativity in their unique settings. Future research could further incorporate classroom observations or surveys to achieve a holistic understanding of how musical creativity is perceived and enacted in the context of ECE in Asia and worldwide.