Supported Voice, Supported Body, Supported text: A Workshop with Annabel Arden and Mary King
Supported Voice, Supported Body, Supported text.
Workshop with Mary King and Annabel Arden
Dates: October 5th and 6th
Times: 9am -6pm
Place: The Thanet Community Centre, Herbert Street London NW5 4HD
Cost: £100 for one day; £180 if you attend both days
Maximum participants: We are hoping to limit this to a maximum of 15 students so that there is an optimum amount of time for both individual and group learning
For professional classical singers and aspiring professional singers. (Either at or about to embark on full time professional training, or recently graduated from University degree, and looking to attend Conservatoire)
Communicating voice and text, with totally connected physical support
The best singers communicate effortlessly at a sustained and expansive level. They are always “on the body” – and not singing “from the neck up” – but what does this mean? and can anyone achieve it? Annabel Arden and Mary King bring their combined expertise to explore the essential question “what is support?” , and help students grow to an understanding of how to unleash the power of their whole instrument, and increase the freedom and expressive power of the voice through the same qualities in the body. Detailed text work will enable students to discover new techniques to increase range and precision of tone, colour and meaning.
The form of this workshop will be to integrate physical work as a group with individual attention paid to the specific need of each singer. This individual work is undertaken within the group’s presence, as learning can then be shared.
Annabel Arden is a co-founder of Theatre de Complicite and an internationally acclaimed director of Opera. Working with young singers to achieve an optimum of theatrical expression with vocal excellence is of particular interest to her. Please also see the following link; http://www.performing-arts.co.uk/clients/directors/annabel-arden/
Mary King worked for many years as a soloist across the opera houses and concert halls of the world. For 17 years she was associated with English National Opera, where she was Artistic Associate, and devised and ran the performance skills course The Knack, which ran for 12 years. She moved on to the Southbank Centre for 6 years as an artist in residence, setting up the big vocal initiative Voicelab. She has worked as a resident vocal coach and expert on numerous radio and TV programmes, including Operatunity; Musicality; Popstar to Operastar; BBC Cardiff Singer of the World. She has written a series of coaching books for Boosey and Hawkes (Singing in English; Singing in French; Singing in German) and The Singer’s Handbook for Faber Music (in collaboration with Anthony Legge)
See also www.marykingvoice.co.uk
The course is by application only, to apply please send a copy of your CV and a Cover Letter to: ardenworkshops@gmail.com
We ask you to submit a CV, photograph and your choice of two arias, which can be drawn from the entire operatic canon. However, it is best if the arias are.
– Short ( there’s more time to work, if the aria is 3-5 minutes long, rather than 8minutes)
– Fairly well-known repertoire, rather than rarities: more group learning is possible when material is more familiar.
– Well known to you ! You should be familiar with the accompaniment and not still at the “note bashing” stage.
– They can be in any language, but if singing in a language that is not English, please prepare a translation which is word-for-word accurate, and not just a general overview of the content.
– All students should know the context of the operatic aria, and details about the character they are playing
We will probably only work on one aria each, but it is good to have a choice
For any queries please reply to Rosalind Parker at ardenworkshops@gmail.com