Workshop leaders 2022

Joey Blake
boston, USA

Joey Blake is a vocalist with an unmistakable style, fluid as it is unique, full of surprises and delivered with masterful grace. His instrument-like approach to the voice gives him a musical vocabulary heard only in the rarest of singers. He is one of the founding and current members of Voicestra, the a cappella ensemble created by Bobby McFerrin. He was also a founding member of Sovoso the group that spun from Voicestra.

Joey’s current projects are We Be 3, an improvisational vocal Trio comprised of himself and two other members of Voicestra, Rhiannon and Dave Worm. Back to the Band an ensemble focusing on Improvisation within the live band experience.

 
Impro performance skills for singers:
An exploration of how to better listen, use of mic techniques and blend in performance and rehearsal.
 
The Solo inside the Song:
In this workshop we will explore how we can use melody to inspire and create improvisation.Also how to use this within the various song forms.
 
Bass & Groove:
Finding bass lines, creating chord changes and manipulating the groove and style on the fly.

 

Roger Treece
LA, USA

Five-time GRAMMY nominee Roger Treece is a composer, arranger, producer, and singer who creates music – improvised and composed – that combines traditional classical elements with jazz, funk, gospel, and world.  A vocal innovator, Roger tours worldwide as a performance artist, composer, conductor and teacher, guiding musicians of all ages and genres in improvisation, creativity, harmony, arranging, rhythm, and solo-vocal technique.

 

Workshop:  Musical Fluency Basic

Musical Fluency is just like language fluency: expressive power, the ability to say what you think. Now we can all do that musically to a degree because we’ve all been around music for a long time,  like how we all learned language just by picking it up when we were kids. Great!  Then why go to school? Well, we went to school so we could learn to speak better, with more vocabulary, with more expressive syntax and rhetoric. Well: now it’s time to do the same thing musically! In this class you’ll learn some basic elements of the musical language and how to practice them, so you no longer have to guess and hope for the best when you improvise: you can be in control of your musical expression just as much as you are with your verbal expression

 

Workshop: Musical Fluency Advanced

This will be an advanced course for those who already know the Musical Fluency Elements. We’re going to practice them while Circle-Singing and put them to use in real time, creating forms, modulating, and anything and everything else. Now, If you’re still a beginner but want to come and sing and learn how to use the Musical Fluency elements, then you’re welcome!

Suba Sankaran Dylan Bell
toronto, Canada

Using nothing but two voices and innovative live-looping techniques, FreePlay’s virtuosic and genre-bending a cappella performance takes you around the world…all without leaving your seat. For the whole workshop program Suba and Dylan are the ideal guest to make the program balance because they can cover almost any subject 

 

Workshop: Find The Notes…tell your story! 
Track: SOUND & MELODY
Using jazz and blues as a musical backdrop, Suba and Dylan explore the use of blues, jazz and pentatonic scales to expand your note choices, scat syllables and other vocables, instrumental imitation, and improvising as a conversational art form. 
 
 
Workshop: Solkattu – South Indian Rhythm 
Track: RHYTHM or TEACHING
Solkattu is the vocal percussion language of South India and a great way to add variety to your rhythm palette. In this introduction to tala, the rhythmic aspects of south Indian music, Suba and Dylan will teach various solkattu patterns, hand gestures, body movements and other rhythmic principles. 
 
Workshop: Live-Looping and Improvisation 
Track: PERFORMANCE
Want to improvise, but don’t have a group to work with? Live-looping is a powerful tool for the solo improvisor, and Dylan and Suba will show you tips, tricks and techniques to make your own one-person band.
 
Workshop: Vocal Percussion: The Art Of Vocal Drums 
Track: RHYTHM
There’s more to vocal percussion than the sounds: the vocal drummer can be a source of compositional inspiration and can lead your ensemble to exciting places. Dylan and Suba will look at the compositional art of vocal drumming, exploring the use of patterns, rhythmic permutations and displacement to create variety and momentum in your vocal percussion.

Ben Schuetz
Hamburg, Germany

Ben is a percussionist, music educator and festival producer. He works worldwide as a workshop leader in the field of body percussion, collaborating with the Goethe Institute, universities and festivals.

Ben loves the combination of rhythm, movement, voice and human encounter. This is evident in his courses and at the Body Rhythm Festival, which he created and which has been held annually in Hamburg since 2015.

 

Workshops: Body Rhythm.    Play your body  

In this workshop we dive into a short choreography with rhythm and vocal patterns. We get to know new movements, games and improv exercises. Our sense of rhythm, coordination and musicality will be trained along the way. Get ready to play your body!

 

 

 

 

 

Roberto Demo
Torino, Italy

Roberto Demo does several activities as vocal technique teacher, a scientific researcher on vocal potential and as a vocalist in studios and on stage in Italy, Europe, and America collaborating with high-level international musicians, in different groups, from vocal solo to bigger bands and vocal groups.

As a very experienced musician and vocalist, Roberto Demo is offering a variety of tools you can use while singing, improve your skills by working with him. His knowledge of the voice, music and, improvising makes him unique as a teacher   

 

 

The Orchestra in the Mouth

                               Can you make your voice sound like a trumpet, a flute, a cello, a violin, a guitar, a harmonica or as a percussion set ? Your Voice has an incredible potential!

 

Singfulness “on stage”

                               Free vocal improvisation and Circlesinging, increasing your personal consciousness. Train your ears rhythm, melody and harmony wise            to develop your improv skills. Patterns, Soloing…  Listening and Silence !!

Rahel Comtesse
Munich, Germany

Rahel Comtesse is an experienced actor, singer and vocal improviser.

She knows how to use her body and imagination to support her singing. Through movement she finds original and honest sounds, that becomes truthful music. Music that touches and moves.

 

Workshop “Lift your Singing into a performance”

In her workshop she will show you a way how to involve your body as an inspiration for singing and how to consciously use space for a more dynamic performing.

Sofia Ribeiro
Portugal

Sofia Ribeiro is a singer, composer, improviser and educator from Portugal. With a solid background in jazz studies, a deep connection to Portuguese traditional music and endless hours of listening to Brazilian legendary musicians, Sofia’s artistry challenges the boundaries of music labels. With ten albums as a leader, she has been performing intensively in Europe, South America and United States for the past 15 years.

Between 2015 and 2019 she lived in New York City, and worked as an artist in residence at the Carnegie Hall. For the past two years, she was part of the faculty at Bobby McFerrin’s Circle Songs course in Omega Institute. In 2019 she was a speaker at TEDx CESA (Colombia).

While teaching, performing and improvising, Sofia explores the endless potentiality of vocal improvisation as a way to transform yourself; a journey towards authenticity, vulnerability and deep connection to one another.

 

The soloing journey

Discover new tools for improving your soloing skills, adding more musical diversity, expansion and direction to your solos.

Connecting voices

Vocal improvisation structures and games that specially focus on deep listening, supporting and connecting to one another.

 

Merel Martens
Vlaardingen, Netherlands

Merel tool the vocal leadership education to the Netherlands. Founded and coached several great choirs (MAZE, DOC) She was chosen as the best choir leader in the Netherland 2018. In other words, she is a multitalented master and in her workshop, you can experience what a great teacher she is.       

 

Workshop Vocal Painting:

Vocal Painting (VOPA) is an extensive collection of interactive hand signals to become a new language for vocal art, used to complement conventional conducting techniques of choral music. It currently consists of 75 signals and more are in the making. Vocal Paiting is created by Jim Daus. In this workshop Merel will use it to shape your musical ideas in the moment, and let you experience how to use it!


 

.

Kees Kool & Sander Gieling
Oosterbeek & Arnhem , Netherlands

Kees Kool and Sander Gieling are experienced and gifted improvisers. They started to work together while singing in DOC (the Dutch Organic Choir) They learned so much from great singers and are willing to share there gratefulness with you. Performing in the moment is what they loves to share. They invented a lot of games that are helpful to learn the musical roles and element in vocal improvisation.    

 

workshop: the playground we create (open for all, please come and try)

 

.

Guillermo Rozenthuler
London, England

Guillermo Rozenthuler is a UK-based vocal improviser and educator from Argentina. He has been practicing and teaching a-cappella vocal improvisation with a focus on musicianship, creativity, human connection, embodiment and deep listening. He offers regular workshops on Circlesinging and Collaborative Vocal Improvisation in-person and online, in the UK and across Europe. 

Guillermo has recently followed his lifelong passion for spontaneous music-making and conceived Anthropos: Songs of Humanity, an a-cappella vocal improvisation ensemble alongside 4 other European singers. 

 

 

Workshop:  Anthropos:

Using invented language and reimagining the purposes of collective song in the tribe as a way into Collaborative Vocal Improvisation  (nice for intermediate- advanced, but if you need a beginners session open for all, It would also work well)

Jaka Skapin
London, England

Jaka Skapin is a Slovenian artist, composer and improviser based in the UK. 

 

He blends his Choral and Jazz influences through interdisciplinary work based on the art form of Collaborative Improvisation.

Recent projects include Bodies of Sound, a collection of live movement, voice and camera improvisations; Collective Identity, which explores co-creation with dancers with Parkinson’s; and Remembering, a fully collaboratively improvised song based album featuring some of UK’s most exciting vocal artists. 

 

Workshop Language in Movement (language/words as a tool of expression rooted in authentic movement) – Open to all. 

  

Sven Keet
Amsterdam, Netherlands

Co-creative arranging
Sven Keet is a conductor, arranger and singer with a great interest in involving the (amateur) singers in the arranging process. Based on music in the moment (improvisation) and artistic brainstorms he creates an arrangement that all the singers involved have ownership of.
Experience for yourself how the magic of improvisation can be used in co-creative arranging!
 
workshop: Co-creative arranging 

Johanna Bernet
Seewald, Germany

Johanna Bernet is a passionate improviser in both the fields of singing and moving. She combines the skills and spirit of somatic approaches with vocal improvisation for a sensitive, awake and powerful singing in groups. She is trained in Elementary education of music and dance (Mozarteum Salzburg) and very grateful for her teachers such as Rhiannon, David Eskenazy, Heike Pourian (CI) and Friederike Tröscher (BMC).

 

Workshop: Wise in Body – Wise in Sound

How do we find support in our bodies for creating music? 

Inspired by the field of Body-Mind-Centering® and other somatic approaches we will enter vocal improvisations and explore how the relation of body awareness and voice serves as a playground for our (co-)creative potential!

 

Julian Knörzer
Freiburg, Germany

Julian Knörzer is as a beatboxer, singer, choir director active in the German vocal scene and internationally active as a lecturer. As a beatboxer he specialized in accompanying choirs and a cappella ensembles. In 2010 and 2011 he was the vocal percussionist of the Jazzchor Freiburg at the “VOCAbuLarieS” concerts with Bobby McFerrin and Roger Treece. In 2015, he published the German instruction book “Beatbox Your Choir – Chöre und Vocal Groups perfekt begleiten” (Schott). He will appear as a performing artist in the blue planet concert 

He teaches beatboxing, circle singing, vocal painting and choir directing at various German music universities – always with the intention of inspiring students for the creative power of improvised vocal music. 

 

Workshop: Beatbox your choir – for beginners

In this workshop Julian shows you the first simple beatbox sounds. You will learn basic patterns for different music styles and get structured instructions on how to support a vocal ensemble in rhythm and groove with very simple tools. Less is more!

Workshop: Beatbox your choir – advanced

In this workshop Julian gives experienced vocal percussionists and beatboxers tips on how to optimize and polish the accompaniment of vocal ensembles. This also includes the spontaneous accompaniment of circle songs. Participants will learn new sounds, complex patterns and optimize their groove in different musical feels. 

Gitte Wolffson
Dusseldorf, Germany

Gitte is improv singer and educator. She initiated the ImproWalk as an experimental sound and singing experience in urban space. The ImproWalk took place in different cities and comes to Nijmegen for the second time. Gitte leads the participants through a selected path around Canisius College. Together the group invents songs inspired by different acoustics, architectual patterns, outdoor floors and natures colours. Out comes a walking concert where everyone is singer and listener as well as a musical explorer at the same time, united in the moment.

Workshop The ImproWalk

 

Barbara Beckmann
Dusseldorf, Germany

Barbara the organizer of the amazing TIN festivals in Dusseldorf. Her workshop will be about: Interactive Framework (in improvised concerts)

 
Using the example from “Awake” Concert from DIVA, Imrpo Choir, 09.10.2021 in Düsseldorf on the new “Singing future Festival” (Video)
 
How do I conceive improvised concerts with mostly non-professional singers. New perspectives on forms that are parity free and yet improvised from the moment along a storyboard. How can we succeed in keeping the energy exciting and interesting. Which methods are helpful for rehearsal. How composed motor lines can guide you through your piece.
 

Workshop: Interactive Framework (in improvised concerts) 

 

Mathieu Vulto
Nieuwleusen Netherlands

Mathieu is lecturer of Music in Education at NHLStenden and teaches Vocal Leadership in School at the Rotterdam Codarts Conservatory. He conducts various choir projects and offers workshops throughout the Netherlands, with a main focus on co-creative singing in music education. Music in the moment will happen, where children are in charge of the musical proces. In 2019, he graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in Aalborg with a Masters’ Degree in Innovative Choir Leading.

 

He will share his insides in the workshop: co-creative classrooms.  

As Vocal Painting spreads across the world on an artistic level, Co-Creative Classrooms are a response to teachers who need to coach children in creating, thinking outside the box and challenging to express themselves through music in the moment.

In the CCC, we see the teacher coaching the group in making lot’s of music & fun, especially singing, and celebrating musical successes! The children are in charge of the musical process.