The backbone of this Music group’s sessions will be based on singing, either literally, through exercises on the voice, or metaphorically, trying to apply a “singing approach” in playing our instruments. Singing is a primordial capacity for human beings as an African proverb testifies: “If you can walk you can dance, if you can talk you can sing”. For musicians and especially instrumentalists, singing is many times set aside, as something to be carried out by professional singers. The goal of this seminar is not – of course- to make everybody a professional singer (as this would cause too many complications in the musical society)!

Rather, singing is seen here as a way to tune into a more “natural” or “organic” way of structuring musical performance, be it improvisation, composition or interpretation. The goal is to stress the importance of connecting our musical hearing, the musical ear, and the ‘inner voice’ that dictates our musical praxis, with the act of singing. Obviously through practice, one can achieve a lesser or greater degree of control on his voice, like in any other instrument. Nevertheless there is something special about the voice: its range of 2 & ½ octaves and also the fact that it is actually an instrument “inside” our body and “attached” to it, makes the human voice a reference for nearly all musical expression, especially when it comes to Modal music that is deriving -most of the times- from vocal music.

So in this Music Group we will apply many practices and exercises of listening, playing, improvising and composing and we will investigate how all the above-mentioned influence and open up possibilities for inspiration and change in our musical perception that can ultimately bring this organic dimension and liveness to the performance of music.

This seminar is open to all instruments and singers that would like to take their understanding of Modal Music a step further working on improvisation, orchestration and composition, through the study of vocal and instrumental repertory of music from Greece, Turkey, Balkans and Middle East.

More info and registration here