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Featured interview with Dr. Lisa Wong on “Artistic Expression and Cultural Perspectives in Healthcare and Community”:

Dr. Wong, you and Lukas Feiress chaired the closing plenary session on “Artistic Expression and Cultural Perspectives in Healthcare and Community” for the recent Joint Congress of the International Association for Music & Medicine and the International Society for Arts and Medicine, “The Future of Music and Arts in Medicine and Health.” Given the varied expertise of three remarkable keynote speakers, Drs. Bill Banfield, Sydelle Ross, and Mazda Adli, it must have been challenging not only to organize this session, but also to edit the transcript for publication in this issue of Music & Medicine. What inspired you to choose this interview format for the panel? 

Thank you! I’m really excited to talk about this panel, and hope the readers will enjoy reading the transcript.

Rather than three more didactic lectures, I wanted to share a conversation with the audience. As the final plenary on the last day of an incredibly rich and fulfilling conference, we felt there was a need to come together to synthesize what we had experienced and learned.  By bringing these three uniquely talented speakers together in conversation, we hoped that their observations and insights would inspire the audience members to reflect on their own roles in Music and Medicine. Each came with their unique stories, but there were common threads…

Tell us more: what common threads did you find amongst the speakers?

One of the most important common threads among all three was song. Bill’s entire career in performance and composition centered around composition and songwriting. But his experience in the ICU with Covid-19 brought music and medicine together for Bill – these very songs literally saved his life.

Music was also always a critical part of the life of Sydelle and Mazda, starting in childhood. They were steeped in music, and each brought that music with them to their adult lives. Sydelle is a palliative care physician who has found the healing power of music for her patients and for herself. Mazda, a psychiatrist, performs with colleagues in a group called “The Singing Shrinks!”  Not only does music heal and provide them with balance as individuals, but singing heals their patients and community as well. 

How might the ideas and models presented in this session/paper transfer to communities around the world? 

Well, first I’d like to express my deep gratitude and congratulations to you, Dr .Hanser and Dr. Stefan Willich for creating such a successful conference in Berlin. The conference provided a space for so many from different aspects of the field to come together for conversation. While we live in a world that is increasingly siloed, with people desperately trying to hold onto their area of interest or expertise, our field of Music and Medicine, and the ideas we talked about in the plenary session but also over the previous several days, is inherently interdisciplinary. Our shared knowledge and what we can learn from our colleagues deepens our understanding of ourselves, our patients, and the community.  The pandemic and subsequent turmoil in our world can only be addressed through shared beauty. Music to heal ourselves, our patients and our community.  And the transcript can’t convey this, but it was so powerful emotionally for all of us to end the conference with Bill and Sydelle singing – not TO the audience, but together WITH the audience.

Table of Contents

Editorial

The Integration of Music and Arts, Medicine and Health

Suzanne B. Hanser

Full Length Articles

International experts at the 2nd Science & Sounds Conference recommend increased use of
music therapy in pain medicine

Dorothee von Moreau, Karin Holzwarth, David Baaß, Sebastian Debus, Ralph Spintge, Christian Zöllner

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Diary analysis of an RCT: Natural language analyses of gamma-music-based intervention

Benjamin M. Kubit, Corinna Parrish, Ziyan Zhao, and Psyche Loui

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1A byte for arts: Digital applications meet artistic expressions

Thomas Ostermann

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The Effectiveness of Iso Principle Mood Modulation Playlists in Inpatient Psychiatry: A Post-Hoc Analysis

Audrey Zybura and John Head

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Music in the brain: Baby steps towards inclusive practices in empirical data collection in
the neurosciences of music

Mari Tervaniemi

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MusiMentes: Home-based musical interventions for people with mild cognitive
impairment and mild dementia, a randomized controlled trial protocol

Camila F. Pfeiffer, Wendy L. Magee, Marcela Parada, Gustavo Stein, Maria Julieta Russo

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Plenary session 5: Artistic expression and cultural perspectives in healthcare and community

Moderator: Lukas Feireiss and Lisa Wong
William Banfield, Sydelle Ross & Mazda Adli