Portraits of Everyday Practice in Music Therapy

Portraits of Everyday Practice in Music Therapy is an edited volume of case studies providing music therapy students and new professionals with critical reflections on everyday clinical practice across a variety of treatment settings, theories, approaches, and cultural contexts.

These case studies articulate the important foundational work occurring around clinical breakthroughs to illustrate less of what music therapy could be given extraordinary circumstances and more of what music therapy frequently is given realistic circumstances. Additionally, each author explores the impacts of cultural values, expectations, and roles on clinical contexts through examinations of their sociocultural identities and how they intersected with those with whom they worked. Discussion prompts at the end of chapters help readers engage in similar reflective practices and sustain engagement with introduced concepts and ideas.

By providing ecological real-world contexts for practice and culturally reflexive lenses through which to understand how therapeutic processes evolved, music therapy students and professionals can be better prepared for the authenticity and complexity of everyday clinical work.

Noah Potvin, PhD, LPC, MT-BC is an assistant professor at Duquesne University. His practice and scholarship focus on developing culturally reflexive, resource-oriented approaches in hospice music therapy that facilitate healthy end-of-life processes in response to individuals’ cultural traditions and social identities.

Kate Myers-Coffman, PhD, MT-BC is an assistant professor at Molloy University whose work focuses on trauma-informed, resource-oriented music therapy for youth and families who have experienced trauma and loss as well as culturally humble approaches to music therapy practice, pedagogy, and research.