There is a wealth of contemporary research in Music Education, Music Psychology and Music and the Brain available online.
Here is a selection of papers, abstracts and articles that I have found useful in informing many projects in schools:
Musical Training Influences Linguistic Abilities in 8-Year-Old Children
http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/3/712.full
Music and the brain: three links to language (A D Patel)
Relating Pitch Awareness to Phonemic Awareness in Children: Implications for Tone-Deafness and Dyslexia
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108552/
Does Music Education Enhance the Developing Brain and Academic Achievement?(R P Martin)
http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/BrainOnMusic/Martin.BrainOnMusic.html
Benefits of Music and Movement for Children
https://www.musikgarten.org/benefits-of-music–movementent.cfm
Implementing a Musical Program to Promote Preschool Children’sVocabulary Development ( I Moyeda)
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1084911.pdf
How non-music majors experience the value of participating in music. R.Bures
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.622.3116&rep=rep1&type=pdf
The Effects of Singing and Chanting on the Reading Achievement and Attitudes of first graders. K.H.Cochran 2008
http://etd.lib.clemson.edu/documents/1220473778/umi-clemson-1814.pdf
The Effects of Music Instruction on Emergent Literacy Capacities among Preschool Children: A Literature Review
https://ecrp.illinois.edu/v10n1/bolduc.html
Phonemic Awareness and Musical Pitch Discrimination: Related? A Strout 2004
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.504.899&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Can Music be used to teach Reading? R.Butzlaff 2000
http://www.artsedsearch.org/summaries/can-music-be-used-to-teach-reading
Can Music Instruction Affect Children’s Cognitive Development? (Commentary)
http://www.ericdigests.org/2004-3/cognitive.html
The power of music: its impact on the intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people S. Hallam (Summary)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0255761410370658
Music Psychologists Adrian North and David Hargreaves have written many fascinating papers on the effect of music on consumer behaviour.
Their book is highly recommended:
The Social and Applied Psychology of Music by A. North and D. Hargreaves
OUP 2008 ISBN-10: 0198567421
Here are some links to abstracts of individual papers:
The Effect of Musical Style on Restaurant Customers’ Spending
Adrian C North, Amber Shilcock, and David J Hargreaves
The influence of in-store music on wine selections.
By North, Adrian C.; Hargreaves, David J.; McKendrick, Jennifer
And this very interesting discussion of the potential dangers of a systematic explicit approach to teaching social and emotional skills:
The curious case of the tail wagging the dog
Carol Craig, Centre for Wellbeing, Glasgow. Feb 2009.
Hey David, love the site – congrats! Thought you might like to take a look at this episode (3) of Oxford in Voice looking at the relationship between music and the bwain:
https://www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk/voice
Cheers
Sparky x