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Fall 2021: Voice and Music Improvisation

Voice and Music Improvisation:  - “Follow your voice…discover the music.”  Explore and expand your musical voice in performance creation.

Follow your voice…discover the music. Follow the music…discover your voice.

What music do you have hidden within your voice? What voices can you discover when you adventure into new musical territories? In this workshop we will explore the special relationship between voice and music, working with four different improvisation dynamics for performance and practice. We’ll improvise in order to:

  • Extend vocal and musical range
  • Cultivate a personal warm-up
  • Develop and interpret unique versions of songs
  • Create original compositions in live performance


FOLLOW THE VOICE
In this work, our voices will travel to different “places”: Tones, timbres, textures, and intensities. When we allow ourselves to experiment, observe, and accept these vocal worlds without expectation, we can develop the capacity to feel intuitively where our voice wants to go. In this way, we learn to “follow the voice” and its creative impulses toward the melodies and stories hidden within the sound. Follow your voice…discover the music.

FOLLOW THE MUSIC
We invite students to take a journey into the world of vocal improvisation, immersing themselves in different musical origins and structures. We’ll explore the sound spaces, harmonic and rhythmic languages, interpretation conventions, and cultural contexts of various styles:

  • Blues and Scat
  • Bolero and Latin American Ballad
  • Flamenco
  • Free Improvisation
    • Voice and piano
    • Voices a cappella: Melodies, rhythms, texts, expressive sounds and vocal effects

We all feel music in our bodies and experience it every day in our thoughts and emotions. This workshop offers students a space to discover and train their own musicality. They will acquire basic musical tools that will help them to sing in live performance with more confidence and ability, as well as deeper esthetic sense and artistic purpose. Developing your musical voice allows you to find a language to express what your artistic voice wants to say. Follow the music… discover your voice.

COVID PROTOCOLS:
Pig Iron is committed to following all federal, state and local guidance and restrictions. This document (also linked at the bottom of the page) lays out the protocols and procedures that Pig Iron will follow for the Voice and Music Improvisation workshop. These guidelines are supplementary to any restrictions. 

These protocols are written with the assumption that vaccines will be widely available for all participants, instructors and staff. Vaccination will be required for all people who are eligible. Also, upon arrival at the first day of the workshop, Pig Iron will rapid test all participants before entry. Testing will be done to ensure everyone's safety inside the workshops as masks will be optional.

DATES:
Friday, September 17th: 6:30-9:00pm
Saturday, September 18th: 10:00am-4:00pm (one 90-minute lunch break)
Sunday, September 19th: 10:00am-4:00pm (one 90-minute lunch break)

COST:
$250

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INSTRUCTOR BIOS:
Audrey Pernell is an American Roy Hart Centre Voice teacher with professional certificates in Vinyasa Yoga, Yoga Psychology, and Therapeutic Massage presently residing in Santiago, Chile. After nearly a decade of classical voice training, she began her journey into Roy Hart work with Jonathan Hart Makwaia as a theater student at Swarthmore College near Philadelphia. Since 2006, she also has worked with Pantheatre at the Roy Hart International Arts Centre in southern France, as well as in Paris, New York, and Santiago. Under the mentorship of Linda Wise, she completed a self-designed master’s degree in Voice Performance and Pedagogy through Antioch University Midwest in 2011, and officially joined the family of Roy Hart Centre voice teachers in 2015. In Santiago, Audrey has taught at various universities and private academies, working with actors, singers, dancers,
musicians, as well as with speech therapists, psychologists, and fellow voice pedagogues. She also shares her work at the Roy Hart International Arts Centre in France, as well as Swarthmore College and Pig Iron School in Philadelphia.

Andrés Zará is a Chilean performer and voice teacher. He first studied singing and music at the Instituto Projazz in Santiago. With over 20 years of professional experience, he has worked as a session musician in productions for national artists including Gloria Simonetti, Daniel Guerrero and Zalo Reyes. Currently, he is the lead singer of the project “Chileswing,” produced by Tito Troncoso, who launched their first album in 2013. Andrés is also a
member of Aranwa, a Chilean theatre company creating original performing arts experiences for early childhood. A graduate of UNIACC with a degree in theater, Andrés has performed in numerous professional productions over the years including Mamma Mia! (Bill, Teatro Municipal de Las Condes), Annie (Daddy Warbucks, TM Las Condes), Cats (Rum Tum Tugger, TM Las Condes), Jesus Christ Superstar (Jesus, Teatro Nescafé de las Artes), Man of la Mancha (Don Quijote, Teatro Municipal de Rancagua), as well as the original Chilean musical La Araucana, with tours in Santiago, Osorno, Rancagua, and Arica. He has studied and collaborated with Pantheatre since 2009 in New York, Santiago, and the Roy Hart International Arts Centre in southern France, where he is now a guest teacher. Andrés has taught voice and singing at numerous Chilean institutions, and has toured
internationally in Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, Canada, The United States, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany.

ABOUT RUMBOS VOICE STUDIO:
Rumbos is a community of performing artists and voice teachers directed by Audrey Pernell
(USA) and Andrés Zará (CHILE). Based in Santiago, Chile, we develop workshops, both in-person and online, that explore the vast expressive and creative potential of the human voice. In Spanish, the word rumbo means direction, path or way. A core tenet of our work is that the voice wants to travel and to take us on a journey, leading us to different places–in our sound, in ourselves, and in the world. Since 2009, we have collaborated with an intimate circle of international and interdisciplinary artists, as well as with diverse educational institutions in Chile and abroad.