Music Therapy Conversations

Dr. Diane Austin DA, LCAT is the Director of the Music Psychotherapy Center in New York City where she offers a two-year post-graduate certificate program in Vocal Psychotherapy. She teaches in the graduate music therapy department at New York University. Dr. Austin has maintained a private practice in music, expressive psychotherapy and supervision for over 25 years, and has lectured and taught Vocal Psychotherapy trainings internationally. Her work has been published in numerous journals and books and translated into several languages. Diane created the first distance training program in Vocal Psychotherapy in Vancouver, B.C. and had a distance training program in Seoul, Korea for 12 years which started again virtually in 2021.  Her first international/multicultural distance training program in Vocal Psychotherapy began in 2018 at Mayfield Farm in England (about an hour from London). Her book, “The Theory and Practice of Vocal Psychotherapy: Songs of the Self” was published by Jessica Kingsley in 2010 and c

Julie Sutton works in a regional adult psychiatry NHS service for patients with severe, complex disturbance, and in private psychoanalytic practice. Having qualified in 1982 she retired from music therapy in June 2020. Over the decades her work covered most areas across the age range and she presented, lectured and examined nationally and internationally. Former Head of Training for NR London she also consulted for the Pavarotti Music Centre in Mostar. Her PhD looked at improvisation as a form of conversation & reflects a lifelong interest in relational musical processes. A BAMT Trustee for three terms, former Editor-in-Chief of the BJMT & EMTC Vice President, Julie has written about music therapy in many chapters and articles, including her books “Music, Music Therapy & Trauma” and “The Music in Music Therapy” (2002 & 2014). She is registered with the British Psychoanalytic Council and is a Board Member of the N. Ireland Psychoanalytic Society. This was an unplanned conversation that covered

Davina qualified as a music therapist from Anglia Ruskin University in 2006 and has been working in wide variety of settings ever since.  She specialised in a brief therapy model, writing her masters these in this field.  She has continued to explore this model in special educational needs settings with children and adults in schools and residential settings.  She has worked in acute and long term mental health in the NHS and continues to explore different and innovative ways of working.  She is currently one of 5 directors at Drum and Brass, a grassroots arts organisation making headway in effecting positive change in diversity and safeguarding in Leicester with dreams of changing the discourse and filling the gaps on a national landscape.  She is a registered supervisor and works closely with BAMT as their area group coordinator and CPD officer. Luke and Davina talk about racial inequalities in the UK and in music therapy. They discuss the BAMT EDI Report, as well as Davina's personal experiences of growing

Associate Professor Daphne Rickson, PhD, teaches music therapy at the New Zealand School of Music – Te Kōkī, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.  She has practiced music therapy and undertaken research with a range of client populations but particularly with children and adolescents in schools.  Her research has involved critical analysis of the concept of disability and investigation into music as an inclusive resource, including: Participatory Action Research with young people who have intellectual disability; an investigation into singing for wellbeing in a Christchurch school severely affected by earthquakes; song-writing with adolescents experiencing life-limiting illness; and music therapy with children who have Autism Spectrum Conditions. Daphne is co-author, with Katrina McFerran, of Creating Music Cultures in the Schools: A perspective from community music therapy (2014). One of topics she touches on in this podcast is the importance of NZ MT trainers collaborating with Maori to ensure th

Alexia Quin is the director of Music as Therapy International, a charity which she founded in 1995 and which seeks to embed music into the care and education of vulnerable people worldwide.  Alexia trained at Roehampton in the late 1990s and worked as a music therapist in the NHS for 15 years.  In 2017 she was awarded the WFMT Advocate of Music Therapy Award and in 2018 she was a member of the Commission which examined the role of music within the care and treatment of people living with dementia. Luke talked to Alexia about the genesis of the charity, which she founded before training as a music therapist. They discuss how training affected her attitude to the work of the charity, and vice versa, and talk in much detail about the many projects that have happened since, and are continuing to be developed at the moment, despite the challenges of the pandemic. After the tumultuous last year, many schools are beginning to think how they might enhance the mechanisms they have to provide universal support to stude

Ray Travasso is a Music Therapist and has been working in children’s and adult services for 18 years.  He trained at the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Centre, London and graduated with a Masters in Music Therapy in 2002.  He has a background in paediatric and adult palliative care and currently works part-time as a Music therapist and Team Leader at The Treehouse, East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices, Ipswich, Suffolk. He is also Director and co-founder of Suffolk Music Therapy Services, an organisation that provides Music Therapy to children and adult care services across East Anglia.  Suffolk Music Therapy Services delivers Music therapy in over 60 organisations in the region, including hospices, care homes, neurorehabilitation centres, schools, charities and private individuals.  Ray leads a team of 15 highly skilled and trained music therapists and is keen to increase access to Music Therapy to more organisations and individuals across the region. Ray talked to Luke about the genesis of his own music therapy

Episode 45 is part 2 of Luke's interview with Alex Maguire, music therapist at Broadmoor high security hospital. Alex talks in some detail about his clinical work in this episode, and some of the important theories he draws on to support his work. The episode also includes Alex's interview with Shamrat Sengupta. Shamrat Sengupta is an Indian renaissance man - in addition to his role as a consultant psychiatrist, he is also a barrister and an actor/writer /performer with the group Eastern Thespians. He is the co-creator of the Bloomsbury Cultural Formulation Interview and is the Responsible Clinician for the mental illness admissions ward at Broadmoor. Also included in the episode are two further excerpts from Alex's performance live at the Vortex Jazz Club in Dalston. The Vortex is a true gem of the UK jazz scene and has done well to survive through lockdown. See the website for details of upcoming gigs.

Alex Maguire is Senior Music Therapist at Broadmoor high security hospital specialising in working with high dependency and intensive care patients. He has presented his work at numerous conferences and has contributed to the books Forensic Music Therapy (JKP 2012), ‘Forensic Arts Therapies –Anthology of Practice & Research’, (FA Press 2016), ‘Working Across Modalities in the Arts Therapies: Creative Collaborations’ (Routledge 2017) and 'Violent States and Creative States; from the Global to the Individual’ (JKP 2018). The Broadmoor Hospital choir for both staff and patients, which he co-founded, has been commended in the Arts and Health Awards, and performs widely at hospital functions, as well as providing a Christmas visiting service to the intensive care wards. Alex has presented at the IAFP Conference in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2017 and 2020. He has a parallel life as an improvising jazz pianist performing and recording in Europe and further afield. This episode includes two interviews conducted by Alex wi

Nate Holder BA, MMus is a musician, author, speaker and music education consultant based in London. He is an advocate for decolonising music education and has been writing, speaking and consulting on the subject for the last five years. Nate brings his passion and skill in public speaking into leading CPD training and workshops; helping address bias and underrepresentation in music classrooms, departments, hubs and boards across the UK.  His first book, 'I Wish I Didn’t Quit: Music Lessons', became an Amazon bestseller and is currently available worldwide. His second book, ‘Why Is My Piano Black and White’, was released in Sept 2020. Nate talked about his own musical education, and what might be missing from mainstream education more generally, in particular due to racial bias. We also discuss his poem, 'If I Were a Racist', featured on his #decolonisemusiced blog, including the reactions to this, both positive and negative. Nate also refers to his own experience of music therapy, taking a music therapy modul

Marianne Rizkallah is the Director and Head Music Therapist at North London Music Therapy, 'Music Therapy Outreach and Enterprise Tutor' for the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and the Vice Chair of the British Association for Music Therapy. Founded in 2018, North London Music Therapy provides music therapy for anyone, of any age, with a mental health condition such as stress, anxiety or depression. NLMT provides music therapy for individuals and groups, designs and delivers workshops for the corporate market, and provides further training and CPD for qualified and trainee music therapists. NLMT specialises in long-term work, and believes that therapy should be offered for as long as someone feels they need it, running counter to the prevailing therapy model in the UK. As a music therapist, Marianne has worked with clients aged from 1 to 100, with conditions as varied as psychosis, autism, learning disabilities and dementia. For NLMT, she works with clients with anxiety. Marianne is also a professional

  Luke interviewed eight colleagues from the team at Oxleas Music Therapy Service about their experiences of adapting practice during lockdown. This has inevitably included a wide range of experiences, some very positive, some frustrating, but all of them demonstrating the ability of music therapists to adapt and improvise in a crisis, keeping the children and young people they are working with at the centre of their practice. You can also find a shorter edit of this project (with a musical bonus) on the service website. Here are their biogs in order of appearance: Sarah Hadley is the manager of Oxleas Music Therapy Service. You can see a more extensive biog for Sarah in the notes for her own episode of Music Therapy Conversations (Episode 36 from March 2020). Oonagh Jones is Principal Music Therapist at Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust where she is Caseload Manager and Lead for the Under 5s service.  Oonagh works in mainstream, special schools and children's centres; with a particular interest in working with chi

Amelia Oldfield feels incredibly lucky to have worked as a clinical music therapist in the NHS for 40 years. In the early 1980s she worked full-time with people with learning disabilities for six years, and then part-time with pre-school children and their families referred from a child development centre, as well as with primary aged children and their families in a child and family psychiatric unit. In 1994, she and her colleague, Helen Odell-Miller, jointly set up the MA music therapy training course at Anglia Ruskin University, and Amelia has taught music therapy students on this course since that time. She has particularly enjoyed running workshops to enable and encourage students to develop clinical music therapy improvisation skills on single line instruments. It has always seemed very important to continue to be active clinically herself during her teaching, as her clinical music therapy work inspired her teaching, and her teaching made her think about her clinical work in a rigorous and critical way.

Andrew West is a child and adolescent psychiatrist based in Oxford. He graduated from Cambridge University with First Class Honours in Natural Science, Part 1a in Law. He went on to study Anatomy at Leeds University and then Clinical Medicine at Oxford. He worked for several years in New Zealand, completing an internship in Psychotherapy and Counselling there. He completed Oxford Higher Training in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 1996 and has intermediate level training in Group Therapy with Children, and Family Systemic Psychotherapy. From 2001 he worked as a consultant in Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Paediatric Liaison Psychiatry in Berkshire, including working as a specialty trainer and consultant appraiser, and for the last five years consulting to a large independent school. After over thirty years in the NHS he now holds an honorary contract as a mentor and coach for NHS staff in the Thames Valley and Wessex region. He has regularly published work in peer-reviewed journals including on ethi

Jamal J Glynn is a registered Music Therapist with the Health and Care Professions Council in the United Kingdom (HCPC). He holds a BA in Musical Arts from the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, and a M.A. in Music Therapy from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, UK. He offers under the North West Regional Health Authority in Trinidad and Tobago Music Therapy to inpatients and outpatients at the St Ann’s Hospital including the Forensic ward, Chaguanas Psychiatric Clinic, Barataria Mental Health and Wellness Centre, Child Guidance Clinic. His work focuses on psychoanalytically informed approaches. Being particularly passionate about exploring the benefits of using the steelpan in Music Therapy within the mental health setting, he wrote his dissertation on this subject in 2011. He is interested in providing a Caribbean perspective to existing knowledge of music therapy interventions and has conducted research focusing on clients living in Trinidad and Tobago. Results of his research have been publi

Irene Lo Coco and Elizabeth Nightingale from Chiltern Music Therapy talked to Luke about remote working in music therapy, including technical and online resources, as well as issues that may arise through these ways of working may bring up. After qualifying as a music therapist, Elizabeth gained clinical experience with adults with neurological disorders and worked with children with a range of needs including developmental delay, behavioural difficulties, and trauma. She later trained as a Neurologic Music Therapist and MATADOC assessor and continues to acquire specialist experience in brain injury and neurodisability through providing NMT and MATADOC assessments for medico-legal cases. She has had her work and research published in the Brain & Spinal Injury Handbook, Journal of Dementia Care, and the British Journal of Music Therapy. She holds the role of Neuro Music Therapy Services Manager for Chiltern. Irene qualified as a Music Therapist in 2007 and has specialized in Neurologic Music Therapy. Her c

In episode 36, Luke talks to his manager at Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust, Sarah Hadley. Sarah trained at Nordoff-Robbins in 1984 where she feels privileged to this day to have experienced a structured and focused training in how to use music to tap into her clients' fundamental "music child"; namely that innate communicative musicality we all possess, which provides the platform for powerful therapeutic inter-relationship though which sustainable outcomes can be achieved. From the outset Sarah has always been intrigued by the other Music Therapy trainings which she feels create multi- dimensional perspectives and rationale to clinical practice and within her team Sarah has consistently sought to recruit across professional trainings. Sarah draws on nearly  35 years practice within the NHS working within multi-professional, inter-disciplinary and transdisciplinary teams, and not least the Oxleas Music Therapy Team itself. Sarah has also had a 20 year working relationship with the charity Music as Therapy Intern

Dr Katrina Skewes McFerran is Professor of Music Therapy, Director of Graduate Research in Creative Arts Therapies, and Head of the new Masters of Creative Arts Therapies (Dance/Drama) at The University of Melbourne. She is a registered music therapist with the Australian association, and Commissioner for Research and Ethics of the World Federation of Music Therapy, as well as being an Editor of the open-access, online forum for music and health – Voices.no. She is also creator of the free-access MOOC – How Music Can Change Your Life – which is full of videos, podcasts and other educational resources for non-music therapists. Her career as a music therapy researcher has largely been focused on young people across a range of health, community and education contexts, and she has written numerous books, chapters and published more than 90 refereed journal articles on this topic. Her most recent publications include a critical review of the music therapy and adolescent literature (McFerran, K.S. (2019). Adolescen

Natasha Thomas, PhD is a Board Certified Music Therapist (MT-BC) currently serving as Visiting Clinical Assistant Professor at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI). She received her undergraduate degree in music therapy from the University of North Dakota (UND), holds a masters degree in special education (also from UND, with an emphasis on visual impairment), and recently completed her PhD in expressive arts therapies from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. Natasha has served on the Midwest and Southeastern Regional Boards of the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) in various committee positions, including the Diversity & Multiculturalism Committee.  She is currently serving on the steering committees of the Black Music Therapists Network and a National Music Therapy Faculty Forum.  Natasha is the creator of two online continuing education courses: “Music Therapy with the Blind and Deaf,” and “Music Therapy and Human Rights Ethics,” both of which are offered through MusicTh

In episode 33 Luke talks to an old friend of his, the conductor John Wilson. John was born in Gateshead and studied composition and conducting at the Royal College of Music, where in 2011 he was made a Fellow. Back in 1994, he formed his own orchestra, the John Wilson Orchestra, dedicated to performing music from the golden age of Hollywood and Broadway, and with whom he has appeared regularly across the UK, including at the BBC Proms annually since 2009. In March 2019, John was awarded the prestigious ISM Distinguished Musician Award for his services to music. He is now in demand at the highest level all over the world, working with some of the finest orchestras and opera houses. In the UK, he performs regularly at festivals such as Aldeburgh, Glyndebourne and the BBC Proms with orchestras such as London Symphony, London Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony and City of Birmingham Symphony. Elsewhere, he has conducted the Royal Concertgebouw, Budapest Festival, Swedish Radio Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic and Syd

After completing a degree in music, specialising in composition, electronic music and piano performance, David trained firstly as a Music Therapist and subsequently as a Psychotherapist. He worked in Mental Health Services in Cambridge as a Music Therapist and as a Clinical Team Lead for an Arts Therapies Service from 1985 to 2016. During the 90s David trained at the British Association of Psychotherapists and gained membership of the British Psychoanalytic Council in 2000. He joined The British Psychoanalytic Association in 2011 and subsequently became a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association and The European Psychoanalytic Federation. In his clinical work he tended to specialise in treating people with significant and chronic conditions that had not responded to previous treatments. His long experience in mainstream mental health contributed importantly to his work in private Psychoanalysis. He also works as a Community Musician running a community project, running a Community Music Proje