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Voice & Choral Feast on the Wild Atlantic Way
June 30 @ 6:00 pm - July 7 @ 10:00 am
A week of immersive choral singing and voice work, surrounded by mountains and the Wild Atlantic Way – for singers with some experience of singing in choirs
Friday 30th June – Friday 7th July 2023
With Candy Verney and Sophie Grimmer
Would you like to develop your voice further?
Have you sung in choirs for a while, and now you feel the need to deepen the quality of the sound?
Would you like to sing more challenging repertoire?
Would you like to immerse yourself in the beauty of the human voice, and have fun too?
This promises to be a very stimulating and restorative course, with a high professional input from both teachers. Candy’s background is in community choir leadership. Sophie’s background is in opera performance, singing teaching and voice pedagogy research. Between us we can draw on extensive experience in diverse complementary fields to offer an immersive week of choral music and personal voice work
Over the week, our own little community will build, sharing profound musical experiences and challenges, seeding new friendships, exploring the natural vibrant beauty surrounding us. So if you want to challenge your singing self, have a sense of adventure, meeting other interesting folk and returning home feeling refreshed, invigorated and in tune, then join us here.
Video Testimonials
Choir Work:
You don’t have to read music.
Music and audio parts will be sent out in advance, and we hope singers will learn their parts before the course. Then when we come together, we’ll have the joy and challenge of working on the quality, expression, dynamics of our sound, increasing enjoyment for singers and listeners alike
Voice Work
Explore ways to increase vocal ease, freedom and flexibility within a safe, secure and supportive environment
Bring compassionate curiosity and a playful enquiry to internal mechanisms.
Discover the enormous potential of a deep and fluid connection of sound to breath, helping to optimise a more embodied vocal function.
Sophie is offering all participants one individual 20 min. voice session, included in the cost of this course. Additional sessions on offer, at extra cost
Who are the trainers?
Candy Verney
Candy Verney has 40 years community music teaching experience:
• Initiating, developing and teaching 7 community choirs over 25 years
• Making arrangements for choirs
• Working in a diversity of settings: schools, old people’s homes, Early Years, work in the corporate world.
• She has written 2 books of songs for Early Years and their parents/carers: The Singing Day, and The Singing Year published by Hawthorn Press
• She has developed and facilitated a training in Community Choirs Leadership, now in its 14th year. Several past students have gone on to make this their full-time profession, bringing this valuable work into school settings, old people’s homes, hospice work, community choirs, and working with refugees
• 3 books of songs for choirs: Songs from Life, Songs from a Full Moon, co-written with Lindsey Williams, and The Song House Book of Irish Songs for Choirs
What will Candy contribute to this course?
Candy will lead the choral part of this course- we will work on our choral skills- dynamics, tone, pitch, blending our voices, the quality of our joint sound.
Together we will spend time interpreting and expressing each song. Often in classically based choirs, there is not time to really dwell on the beauty and richness of the music. And in community choirs, we don’t have the opportunity to work on more difficult material. Here we’ll dive into each song’s rich depths, so that we feel we truly know the song.
Sophie Grimmer
Sophie Grimmer has worked with the voice for 30 years, in several different contexts:
• Vocal professor, London conservatoire (21 years, FHEA).
• Guest director of devised voice work in drama schools (RADA, Drama Centre).
• Private London studio for singing professionals (often supporting those returning to training with vocal ‘struggles’).
• Vocal consultant/singing teacher for NYCGB and Ingenium Music Academy.
• Voice pedagogy research publications (eg. contribution in Oxford Handbook of Singing OUP 2019).
• Artistic director of music education outreach projects (schools, prisons, hospitals).
• International soloist soprano (ENO, BBC, Banff) and actor (RNT, Walt Disney Concert Hall/LA, Epidaurus).
What will Sophie contribute to this course?
• Investigate, through this deeper relationship between breath and sound, how to release unnecessary ‘holdings’, enabling more vocal ‘colours’.
• Encourage a more liberated ‘authentic’ and individual vocal expression.
• Seek out ways to find real joy in the process of singing, cherishing both the physical sensation and its expressive power.
Programme for the day
| 9.30am-12.30pm | Singing |
|---|---|
| 12.30 | Lunch |
| 2-6.00pm | Free time to explore, do your own thing |
| 6.30-8pm | Supper, followed by more singing |
| 8-9pm | We either have a visiting singer, or we sing, and create our own entertainment by sharing songs and making space for those who wish to share their talents, be they musical, storytelling or games. We may invite a local ‘seán-nós’ singer to give us a session one evening. (There are several videos of Diane Cannon and Noeleen ní Cholla, both wonderful ‘seán-nós’ singers, singing at the Song House on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/songhousefalcarragh) Most music sessions in local pubs start at 10pm. We sometimes join in at a special session on a Tuesday evening. Our fire pit overlooking Muckish mountain. On a fine evening, it’s magical to light a fire, and sing around the fire. |
Cost
What is included?
This covers all tuition, accommodation, food for breakfast and lunch, and the evening meal when you arrive on the first night.
Accommodation is available at The Song House (with a limited number of single rooms, and some shared rooms) or nearby locally.
Pricing
| En Suite – shared twin room | €1100 per person |
|---|---|
| Shared twin room | €890 per person |
| Bunk Room | €850 per person |
| Single Room in Song House or B&B | €1170 per person |
| Camping | €800 per person |
| Non-residential price (includes lunch and evening meals) | €750 per person |