Descriptions of Song recitals and workshops.

Recitals:

Repertoire for Baritone and Piano: Songs by Dowland, Purcell, Schubert, Schumann, Wolf, Mahler, Ravel, Butterworth, Gershwin, Coward, Brinch and others.

Workshops

• Singing with large groups of people from a period of 10 minutes to 60 minutes. I have a large selection of rounds and songs and part songs, many, I find particularly beautiful and are in some ways challenging either melodically, rhythmically or harmonically. Through these a deeper experience of music making is achieved and the music can do its work in the soul of the participant. I have also a selection of children’s songs that are both well and little known, these have a good effect when sung with adults! I am open to suggestions and willing to work with any material as long as I can somehow find a connection to the music myself. I have various warm-up exercises and often make up exercises on the spot. The main purpose for me in such sessions is for the participants to feel free to sound their voice and to exercise the balance of listening and singing. To access the music in the most profound way at the simplest level of technical ability. This I pursue with a light-hearted and joyful approach as I have consistently found that a joyful soul is more easily brought into song!

  
  

• Workshop 1: “Sing for the joy of singing” ….choir pieces, rounds and folksongs and work on the voice with exercises and introduction to the singing voice in general.

• Workshop 2: Improvisation with percussion instruments (slate, sticks, rainsticks, shakers, crystal glasses, drums, bordune-lyres, drums, box-drums, simple flutes etc.)  Exploring the nature and character of the instrument and discovering the technical challenges and musical possibilities of the various instruments and the contrasts before setting out to improvise and create a compositional structure which has a form that can be performed.

• Workshop 3: General music investigation. Exploring musical elements through simple rhythm and singing. Listening to everyday sounds and finding out the way we recognize phenomenon through our sense of hearing. 

• Workshop 4: Conducting workshop and improvisation. Circle games and some space and body-awareness work and simple conducting exercises. Simple improvisational elements brought together to create a sound texture through ostinati and solistic elements.

• I also lecture on music, musical phenomena and elements, the act of composing from a more human psychological and biographical aspect. (ie. taking a sonata movement by Mozart and looking at the form and content in terms of how we experience tension and relaxation, question and answer and characterizing the themes in terms of human experience.

• My experience also includes teaching people to compose songs and rhythms to given verse, poetry and prose and exploring the relation between word and musical elements.

• I teach non-musicians music theory based on my research on the intervals, which can be read about in my article “The Prime and the Octave The ultimate musical polarity”.

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