Voice workshop led by Guillermo Rozenthuler, a London-based Argentinian singer and voice teacher, with "extensive expertise in World Music and a unique approach to vocal training".
He began by showing us exercises to open our minds to new ways of thinking and responding - walking backwards is apparently especially good, and exercises to relax the neck, "the hinge of the brain to the body". The things to concentrate on are focus and to avoid feeling isolated - to be "present and of the world", which involves something he calls "practising presence". The gestalt is most important: giving one's part, whatever it may be, to the group. It is different from, for example, football chanting, in that listening is essential: Navajo conversation is mostly people sitting in silence and listening; improvising is a similar process of making a comment in a conversational landscape.
He commented that England is still such a powerful country, so the more its people engage with themselves, the better. Even in the few years he has lived in the UK (since 2000), those things which define Englishness have changed and are being dropped as "hangups of expression" decrease, e.g. behaving without inhibitions is more common now even without the use of stimulating substances; people are more willing to engage with their bodies and trust in expression. I found this an interesting point of view for the thesis.
Improvising is hampered by making value judgements, so as he noticed us affected by it he re-set our mental environment by stopping and starting, and changing time, to make us concentrate on listening and reduce our time for value judgements.
We blended amazingly well by the end of the seminar, and were all happily experimenting. The results were so good it was a pity not to have a record of them; but then, that's one of the characteristics of improvisation - it is ephemeral.
"The purpose is not just to do something together but also to make music."
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