Currently, society operates within a politically charged environment, where policies seek to stifle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and rewrite narratives surrounding marginalized identities. These efforts challenge the very foundation of inclusive education and, by extension, the role of music and the arts as spaces that engender empathy—to enter into the world of another, see and feel beyond oneself, and grasp the fragile dignity of human life in its plural forms. One does not simply feel-with (Aragona, 2016; Hendricks, 2023); one is taught how and for whom to feel. For educators, empathy is not an abstract concern, but a cornerstone of teachers’ success (Aldrup et al., 2022). More specifically, teacher empathy is an imperative quality to “understand students’ personal and social situations, feel caring and concern in response to students’ positive and negative emotions, and communicate their understanding and caring to students through their behavior” (Meyers et al., 2019, p. 161). Within music education, empathy is often presumed to arise naturally through shared musical activity, as musical engagement demands interpersonal coordination, attunement, responsiveness (Ellerbe, 2021). When students play, sing, or improvise together, they must listen, anticipate others’ actions, and shape their own expressions in relation to the group. Hendricks (2018) emphasized how such practices cultivate forms of relationality that echo broader social, ethical dynamics: patience, reciprocity, mutual recognition. Further, empathy can be cultivated intentionally among in- and preservice teachers (Neary, 2020); resultantly, music teacher educators should integrate holistic, artistically grounded approaches in their curricula. In this presentation, we examine empathy through an artistic lens, situated within music teacher education. We propose artistic empathy as a curricular framework that places empathy at the core of the music education experience. An artistic empath experiences music in ways that cultivate an intellectual and emotional understanding of the lived realities of others, expanding on Nussbaum’s (2001) concept of “narrative imagination,” which emphasizes envisioning what it is like to be in someone else’s position and grasping their emotions, wishes, and desires (p. 10). The framework includes four interrelated pillars: Relational Aesthetics, Critical Emotional Literacy, Cultural Positionality, and Imaginative Responsiveness. Together, the pillars create a Resonant Arc of empathy, where students might engage in sustained empathic practices. We provide examples from our own courses of how the pillars can be used in practice, modeling artistic empathy so preservice teachers may cultivate empathic capacities in their future classrooms while developing into artistically empathic music educators themselves.