Becoming a music teacher is a complex process where both theoretical and practical knowledge needs to be acquired. However, these two complementary kinds of knowledge tend to remain separated in music teachers' conceptions (Westerlund & Väkevä, 2011). Indeed, practical skills, such as singing or playing a musical instrument, are often considered more relevant than theoretical knowledge, which, on the contrary, may support music teachers’ practice and assist them in being critical and self-reflective about their music teaching activities (Westerlund & Väkevä, 2011). Perhaps, these conceptions originate during music teachers' education programme, where theoretical and practical subjects are taught with little relation to each other such as occurs in Italian higher music education.This paper aims to shed light on the process of embedding theory and practice in higher music education through an apprenticeship experience based on the idea that learning is a process of "becoming" (Calvert et al., 2023), grounded in lived experience and the environment where students interact, while developing their skills (Rogoff, 1990) and being actively engaged through body and mind involvement (Leman et al., 2018).An ethnographic case study approach (Barrett, 2020) was adopted involving a higher music student-teacher. Data were collected through observation, field notes, and a student’s written work over a period of one and a half years, organised into three phases, where the body-mind relationship was embedded in theoretical and practical activities. During the first phase, the researcher taught an eight-session music education methodology course, each three hours long, where students were guided in self-reflection and in planning their apprenticeship. During the second phase, the student involved in this study undertook action research as part of her twenty-hour apprenticeship in two first-year secondary school classes. She investigated whether combining group movement activities with abstract paintings used as scores could facilitate pupils' voice emission. During the third phase, the student wrote her master's thesis. The researcher took field notes after each course session and meeting with the student.The findings show how the student became increasingly aware of integrating the theory in planning, executing, and justifying the practical activities. As shown in the thesis, she improved her reflective and critical skills, becoming autonomous in selecting both practical and theoretical material related to the class context.Further research could be undertaken on the implications of theory-practice activities in the apprenticeship of higher music student teachers for developing their personal formation as future music teachers.