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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]

Participatory approaches to practice are a fundamental aspect of the evolving Community Music Therapy (CoMT) discourse (Stige & Aaro, 2012). While collaborative process is critical to participatory practice, there is currently limited practical understanding of the process of collaboration in CoMT projects, and the experience of collaboration for participants. This study investigates the process of collaboration between a music therapist and community participants in three participatory music projects in Melbourne, Australia. These projects were undertaken with three separate communities supporting groups of marginalised young people. The young people and their supporting communities collaborated as co-researchers in this study, and we used an action research design. Together, we sought to understand and articulate the process of collaboration in participatory music projects, and to investigate the meaning of collaboration for the young people involved. We explored these areas though cycles of action and reflection, and results emerged from a series of iterative, interpretative analyses. The results of these analyses were: 1) A practical model of collaborative process in music therapy, and 2) an understanding of the conditions required to optimise the potential for positive growth for collaborators in participatory music projects. The research process and results are articulated in this paper. The ultimate outcome of this research is a synthesis of these results. In this paper I offer an overall picture of what collaboration in CoMT project involves and requires of collaborators—a process I call "Being a player". This is articulated from the perspective of community participants, who are—as elucidated this study— critical actors and decision-makers in a collaborative approach to music therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the experiences of clients with music in the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music. The method involves clients forming mental images in response to the music they listen in a relaxed state. The specially designed music program consists of pieces from classical music, thought suitable for addressing some specific problems. The study showed that music has a natural ability to evoke imagery, altered states of consciousness and the potential for self-healing.

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.

The article presents a study on the collaborative heuristic analysis of the nature of responses to specially designed music programs. It involved a group of co-researchers collaborating to study and gather each other's as well as their own experiences in response to the music programs. The study, known as Imagery-M, is a modification of the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music used to study the imagery forming in response to listening music.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses reports within the issue including a phenomenology of a child's creation of stories and songs, the parents' experiences of singing with their hospitalized infant children, and the historical developments in Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy.