Choose Your Adventure
A list of facilitator-led workshops that participants will be able to pre-select by vote before arriving at the 2023 UK Vocal Improv Festival Retreat in October.
We wanted to give you more freedom and specificity to be able to follow the areas of vocal improvisation that really call you to.
IMPORTANT: There are more sessions listed than are possible to fit into the pre-selected workshop programme!
We will receive your preferences, and then a very clever couple of festival elves will figure out the programme according to numbers and capacity. The sessions are open to all unless stated otherwise.
We trust in what is meant to be and request your openness and trust too!
Exploring Your Voice
Primal Voice with Randolph Matthews
Explore techniques rooted in Primal Voice to connect with instinctual nature and experience a deep, whole-body vocal expression
Ancestral Voice with Jaka Škapin
An enquiry into human and non-human ancestry through vocal expression. What does it unveil and call in?
Craft Your Vocal Improv Persona with Uran Apak
Birth and explore a variety of personas through your improvised voice and then develop one in more detail
LaLaLand with Kate Mellors
Use play, clowning, costume and characterisation to unlock your ‘voices’. Unleash the choir within you!
Breath and Expression with Randolph Matthews
Discover how to harness the transformative power of breath to connect with your inner self and express yourself fully
Partner Play with Kate Smith
Voice and movement games for duos/small groups to explore and embody dynamics of support, giving, receiving, listening, and trust (involves touch)
Songs of Humanity (a CVI workshop) with Guillermo Rozenthuler
An invitation to explore the unknown, a journey back to the ancestral using invented language, sound and rhythm as our musical substance to nurture co-creation and depth
Nature Connection
WalkSing with 'Sound Fishes’ with Uran Apak
A deep listening and sounding practice by the lake inspired by Pauline Oliveros
Listening In, Listening Out with Kate Mellors
An outdoor immersive session harnessing deep listening and resonance to tap into the vibrations of nature and ourselves
Duets with Nature with Kate Smith
Playful explorations of embodiment, connection, and personhood through singing with more-than-human collaborators in nature
Journey to the River with Emma Coleman
Opening ourselves and ‘our-cells’ to the natural world’s biophony on a meditative walk down to the River Avon with singing stops to tune in and sound out
Voice and Movement
Moving Songs with Kate Smith
Co-create songs through movement and sounding, focusing on dynamics of embodied rhythm, use of space and relationship, shapes and patterns, etc.
Murmuration with Jaka Škapin
Replicate flocks of birds through voice and movement patterns, simultaneous leading and following, soloing and returning
Spherical Space Work with Randolph Matthews
Explore the idea of creating a three-dimensional space with your voice, expanding vocal presence beyond your physical body
Sounding Movement Meditations with Kate Smith
Explore subtle sensations and movements that tune the nervous system, quiet the mind, tone the voice, and tap into whole body creative expression
Vocal Musicianship
Pattern Play: Variations and Modifications with Guillermo Rozenthuler
(intermediate-advanced)
Explore creating and evolving 'singable' patterns and learning to refine them in real time, both for personal practice and group work
Intro to Harmony (intermediate)
Explore things like: interval/chord awareness and major/minor scale chord progressions
Harmony Geek-out (advanced)
Go deeper into things like: major scale modes, modal shifting, chromaticism, chord extensions
Intro to Rhythm (intermediate)
Explore things like: odd-time, grooves in 3 and 4, straight/swung feel, downbeat/upbeat subdivisions in 3 and 4
Rhythm Geek-Out (advanced)
Get stuck into things like: odd-time, poly-meter, 16th note grooves practice, syncopation, creating distinct and variable grooves
Circlesong Architecture with Guillermo Rozenthuler (advanced)
Ideas to help participants generate instant polyphony, harmony and counterpoint, edit as you go, and develop circlesinging arrangements, balancing clear structure and a moving tapestry
Small Ensemble
Intro to CVI with Briony Greenhill (intermediate)
Intro to some core forms for accessing collaborative vocal improvisation, e.g. motor interlocker counterpoint solo, pattern duets, turn, sound paintings, improvising with language, supported solo
Delving into Duets with Emma Coleman
Focus the lens on this under-explored playspace. Connect with and bounce off one other. Explore different ways of two becoming one!
The Inspiration Station! with Kate Mellors
Using various stimuli as 'ways in' to co-creating music. Games using the senses, imagery, words and personas to help access our flow.
Advanced CVI with Briony Greenhill (advanced)
Improv with lyrics, spontaneous song creation, small group CVI forms, authenticity, intimacy, support, healing forms
And...
Circlesongs Playground with Guillermo Rozenthuler (advanced for leaders)
A fluid space to put into practice circlesinging architecture, collaborative leadership and in-the-moment responsiveness to the feeling in the room and the diverse skills in the group
Body Rhythms Intro with Emma Coleman
Discover the rhythms living in you and your body, explore your body's textures and beats with clicks claps stomps and taps, become groove itself!
Meditative Voice with Jaka Škapin
Slowing down through a somatic journey of toning, chanting, and mindful gratitude practice
Witnessed Solos with Emma Coleman
Stretch that comfort zone! In pairs, takes turns to drop into yourself and be seen and heard, sing-sounding from the present moment, with a compassionate witness