SING FOR YOUR HEART NEXT DECEMBER

We have received a lovely invitation to contribute to "Sing for Your Heart", an initiative from Heart Research UK, that we think we should share with you.

A Sing for Your Heart event encourages choirs, singers and people alike all over the country to sing, whether in a train station, bus station or at home on the karaoke to raise money for Heart Research UK. Choirs and singers can sign up to sing at one of our organised city venues, but they also want to encourage everyone to set up their own events and sing to raise money for them.  Not only is singing a great way to raise money, research has shown that it's also good for your heart. It has been proven that singing not only warms the hearts of so many people all over the world but research shows that singing is also good for the heart.

There are many ways in which you can help from planning your own Sing for your Heart event to supporting one of our Sing for your Heart events by volunteering to collect for a couple of hours or recruiting you local choir, music group, singers to perform or why not go the extra mile and coordinate one of our events. 

If you require further information or fundraising support please contact Claire in the fundraising team on community@heartresearch.org.uk or call 0113 297 6212.

More information at  http://heartresearch.org.uk/fundraising/sing-your-heart

HOW DO WE WANT OUR CHOIRS (The Singing4Health approach)

We want our choirs to be inclusive.- a choir for everybody who wants to join regardless of how people consider that they can sing or not. Even people who consider themselves to be “tone deaf” has proved considerable improvement with practice, relaxation, enjoyment and lack of judgement. I even had students in the past who said “they couldn't sing” and ended up a three year period being able to sing solos from musical comedies in front of an audience! Never underestimate your skills.

A workshop in a lovely place, Leith Hill. For Heritage2Health.

We want our choirs to be embracing- a group that at the same time that they do musical and body training, are working towards community building and socializing with the others. This process is as important as any final concert, performance or presentation; what is happening inside the choir, that is a matter of days and weeks and months of collective practice. We become inclusive when we are able to recognize and accept everybody with disregards of their “apparent” skills. And I say apparent meaning that many people join choirs thinking they can do less of what they can really do, and on the other hand, there are skills that sometimes remain unnoticed in a first instance that mean a lot to a group, and they are not always related to singing: patience, empathy and not being judgemental are some of them. People who naturally stand out in this are a real treasure for any group, as positive attitudes are contagious!

We want our choirs to be a safe place where to express ourselves- to be able to balance what as choir singers when sometimes need to give in, in favour of a group sound, so may be our way of singing in a choir won't be exactly the same as our solo singing. At the same time we enjoy and give the opportunity to create spaces where individual expression is supported by the group and each member is given it's time and opportunity to make their own individual contribution to the richness and variety of the whole.

Where we are all on the same boat.
Are we ready to become in our choir the difference that we want for the world?

  ©2014 Maria Soriano

PRIMAL SINGING AS WORKSHOPS FOR WELL BEING (III)

It was then when I was offered the opportunity to do my first workshops in Primal Singing. As before, I started in Yoga centres, offering this technique as 'mindful singing', and getting a wonderful group of people willing to sing and express themselves. I taught at the Yavanna Centre and at the Allegro Spacio, both in Madrid. 

We would do mainly Primal Singing, but also often followed by short songs of students' own choosing. And it was clearly the intense Primal Singing sessions that provided the essential groundwork for students to then be able to meaningfully sing their own songs. 

 Thus I remember how workshop attendees, once attuned to a state of mind that will lead to it, would choose a meaningful song for them and work their emotions over it. The woman who had been forbidden to sing from the age of 12, for example, who now came for a singing lesson in her 60s, and chose a children's song she always loved, through which she got in touch with so many feelings almost forgotten consciously. Or the stiff dancer who chose a song of the loss of youthful innocence, whose muscles relaxed in resonance with her singing that connected her with those primary emotions. 

Such were the incredibly powerful experiences that gave me the assurance and confidence to know that I wanted to develop the Primal Singing method further.

Later on, it was time to move out of my 'comfort zone', and I started to offer it as 'emotional improvisation as a tool in modern singing didactics' for students of voice, particularly at Escuela de Musica Creativa, the largest private music school in Madrid. You can see, published below, a typical example of a workshop in Primal Singing that took place in Madrid in 2007.

For a vivid short summary of what Primal Singing can do for people, I would recommend you watch the following video:

'Before and after Emotional Work session'

During these years, I persevered with my experimental work, observing body expression and body changes as Primal discourse takes place, observing how audiences and participants react to it and would find in it a channel for self expression they didn't have before, or they didn't realize they had. 

I recognised that the health-related aspect of my Primal Singing practice had been growing more salient and more obvious in light both of my own lived experiences, reactions, and personal transformation and of those of participants in my workshops.

© Maria Soriano 2014