Workshops for Choirs – book by email to markburstow@icloud.com or call 07826 444572

I do not have a standard workshop which I take from choir to choir. I would much rather hear what a choir is doing, find out what the conductor wants from the day, and work from there. Much depends on the choir.

Tuning is an obvious area. In unaccompanied music, a major third is not simply a note which agrees with the piano. It has to find its place in the harmony. When it does, you hear the chord settle. That is one of those things which can sound rather theoretical until a choir actually does it. Then everybody hears the difference.We may look at vowels, consonants and the natural shape of the words. Very often one thing fixes another. A chord which appeared to have a tuning problem may really have a vowel problem. That is one of the reasons I enjoy this sort of work.

What might we work on?

It depends entirely on the choir and the music, but areas might include:

• tuning chords and intervals
• balance between the parts
• blend
• vowels and consonants
• colour
• phrasing
• dynamics
• words and their relationship with the musical line
• unaccompanied singing

I am particularly interested in the way these things connect. Blend, for example, does not mean making every voice anonymous. Nor does good diction mean attacking every consonant as though it has equal importance. The object is still to make music.

Working on your own music

I am very happy to work on repertoire which the choir is already rehearsing. In fact, that can be one of the most useful ways to spend a workshop. Every choir has passages which have been rehearsed often enough for everybody to know that they are troublesome. Sometimes a different pair of ears can help.

I am not there to take over from the choir’s conductor. I would hope instead to add another way of looking at something.

We can also choose music specifically for the workshop. That gives us the chance to explore a particular problem in one piece and then see what happens when the same idea is applied somewhere else. Unaccompanied music is particularly good for this.

It is also usually great fun.

Booking a workshop

The best place to begin is with a conversation. Tell me about the choir and what you are singing. Tell me what is going well and what is driving you mad. If there is a particular piece you would like to work on, we can start there. If you would prefer me to suggest repertoire, that is equally possible. We can make the day quite detailed, or range more widely. Either way, there will be plenty of singing.