In 2020, I ran this series twice (summer and autumn). I don’t know when I’ll run it again, but if you have suggestions, questions, and requests please email me.
The Integrated Musician: Twelve (Independent) Themed Seminars
Each seminar is self-contained. Pick and choose the themes you’d like to study, or sign up for all of them.
Based mostly on materials from my book Integrated Practice: Coordination, Rhythm & Sound. Open to singers, instrumentalists, conductors, composers, and music teachers. Amateurs and beginners are welcome.
1. The Rhythms of Musical Language
2. The Structures of Rhythm
3. Embodied Musicianship
4. Object Wisdom
5. Practice and Interpretation Strategies
6. Sound: Hearing, Listening, Reacting
7. Improvisation as a Lifestyle
8. The Harmonic Series
9. Messa di Voce
10. Embodied Musicianship II
11. Memorization
12. Approaches to Concert Preparation
1. The Rhythms of Musical Language
Become alert to the driving forces of rhythm in everything you say, play, and sing. Tools, concepts, exercises, games, and jokes to get more rhythm into your life.
2. The Structures of Rhythm
Enjoy organizing your perception of rhythm in music. Clarify time signatures, both as numerical relationships and as markers of sensations and emotions. Get an overview of phrase structures. Make friends with the metronome. Understand and practice the basics of rubato.
3. Embodied Musicianship
Enjoy orienting yourself in space. Alertness, expansion, stability, mobility: pleasure.
4. Object Wisdom
Develop creative, intelligent, adaptable, and sensitive hands and fingers through the art of handling household objects.
5. Practice and Interpretation Strategies
Draw useful and health-giving practice habits from the information in the music score itself. Learn about the four energies employed in music. Develop the art of making coherent interpretive choices. Practice joinery, or the art of clarifying the structure of a piece and its flow in practice.
6. Sound: Hearing, Listening, Reacting
Become alert to the power of sound—those that you make, those that you hear. Become alert to the environments in which you make music. Sense sound as vibrations and oscillations. Understand the difference between discernment and judgment. Sense the healing potentialities of sound.
7. Improvisation as a Lifestyle
The skills of an improviser are born of an attitude which we can call “availability.” In this workshop we’ll do multiple exercises to increase your availability to the wonders of improvisation. No previous improvising experience necessary.
8. The Harmonic Series
Understand, appreciate, and enjoy the most basic phenomenon of tonal music and of acoustics.
9. The Messa di Voce
Musical freedom requires comfortable contact (with the instrument or with the voice) and supple dynamics. The messa di voce (or “placing the voice”) is one of the best possible exercises to integrate technique and musicianship.
10. Embodied Musicianship II
Further exercises to unify body, mind, and music.
11. Memorization
Concepts, tools, and exercises to improve your musical memory.
12. Approaches to Concert Preparation
Work habits to improve the preparation of concert performances.
