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Music Therapy practices with premature and medically fragile infants and families have been widely researched and documented across the globe. Despite such a plethora of discourse, there remain many questions within the evidence base. In particular, exploring and understanding parents’ perceptions of musically engaging with their baby, the role of the music therapist when working with the infant-parent dyad and understanding where music therapy practice is best placed to intervene within such a multifaceted and acute health care continuum. This qualitative inquiry, adopting Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) methodology explores how parent’s experience and perceive interactions with their baby through moments of singing and using their voice in a Neonatal Unit (NU). Findings emerged across four waves of analysis with recurrent themes including the intrinsic role of singing and voice to support the developing identity of parents and act as a fundamental bridge of connection to their premature baby; the powerfully supportive role of voice to meet the emotional needs of parents; and accessing voice as a self-soothing coping tool for parents. Moreover, the concept of time across differing stages of the acute neonatal journey and its influence on parents’ experiences and perceptions of voice inductively emerged across cases. Moreover, findings highlighted singing and voice interactions as a critical dialogical encounter of perceived connection and recognition that validated the parent’s developing relationship with their baby. Finally, the role of the music therapist was explored with dialogue emerging acknowledging the importance of this role in supportively educating and facilitating parents to find their voice and connect with their baby in the NU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following story is a written portrait (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997) of Yuna, with particulars constructed and consolidated from data obtained from several of this study's participants. All had travelled to the US to study music therapy from a country in Asia. The form, themes, and shape of the story is taken directly from transcript data, while details have been fictionalized to create greater context for the reader's understanding of Asian students' lived experiences. The music excerpt that follows the story is offered as a way to further enhance our comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the role of intuition in music therapy as an undefined source of direct knowledge. The author worked as a music therapist for many years with neurologically impaired people which stimulated his interest in this direction. The concept of guided imagery in music therapy is also explored in the study which involves four functions of sensing, feeling, thinking and intuiting. The study was based on the intuitive experiences of six music therapists in their work.