Rethinking Choral Musicianship
Developing a choir’s musicianship skills may take time from today’s immediate goals, but makes future goals easier to achieve.
Musicianship is to performing music what motor mechanics is to driving classic cars – you can get away with relatively little, but the more you are familiar with how the whole thing works, the more confidently and competently you do it, and the easier it is to troubleshoot when something goes awry. This workshop explores the benefits of investing time in musicianship training to enhance the skills the singers come in with. It shows how both warm-up exercises and repertoire work can be used to develop skills that will make future learning more efficient. The workshop assumes that the most confident in a choir can still usefully be stretched, and that the least confident can always make useful gains!
This workshop is intended primarily for non-professional choirs. Content will be adapted to the current needs of the specific ensemble.
By the end of the workshop, participants will:
- Have a range of musicianship games and exercises appropriate to their current development needs
- Understand how to use these exercises to help their musical understanding of repertoire they are currently learning
- Have the confidence to know that, whatever their current level of musicianship, continuing to develop it will always pay dividends.
- Diagnostic games to determine current skill profile
- Introduction of musicianship exercises appropriate to current needs
- Exploration of how to integrate exercises into work on the choir’s specific repertoire
- Opportunities to reflect on the learning experience
Resource document that summarises the concepts introduced and activities undertaken during the workshop, and gives suggestions for further reading and practical resource suggestions.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Rethinking Choral Musicianship - print friendly.pdf | 31.93 KB |