WORKSHOPS (for groups)

THE ULTIMATE CHOIR WARM-UP

What's the best way to start a rehearsal? How to get your choir focused and warmed up mentally, physically and vocally, before starting work on your repertoire. How to create an atmosphere of trust, fun and cooperation amongst your singers, and even comfortable with moving and dancing. Get some ear-training and solfege in "through the back door" as you do vocal warm-ups.

GET THE GROOVE – PART ONE: SWING

Every musical style has its own special rhythms, textures and style-appropriate arrangements. Every style also has that certain extra "something" that is often indefinable, but so obvious when it's missing! We call it the "groove". It's not about singing the notes "correctly", but very often about singing what's NOT written in the notes: singing "laid back" or pushing forward on the beat, sliding into syncopations or attacking them, accents, slurs, using different vocal qualities, enunciation, the lack thereof ... In this seminar, we examine these aspects through my arrangements of two American Songbook favorites: "Blue Moon" (Rogers/Hart) and "Fascinatin' Rhythm" (Gershwin/Gershwin/E. Rabin). Scores provided in advance.

GET THE GROOVE – PART TWO: BRAZIL

Can an Israeli or German choir possibly sing in a bossa-nova groove? Is samba out of the question for them? It isn't easy, but it's possible! How to GET THE GROOVE in my arrangements of two Brazilian classics: "Agua De Beber" (Vinicius de Moraes/Antonio Carlos Jobim/ translated into English or Hebrew) and "Sonho de um Carnaval" ("Carnaval Dizengoff" by Chico Buarque/trans. E. Manor).

MEET THE BEATLES

A trip down memory lane, including anecdotes of myself as a girl growing up during "Beatlemania", alongside Beatles stories, all as a background to work on their songs: "Eight Days A Week", "Michelle" and "When I'm 64".

SINGING IN (AMERICAN) ENGLISH

SINGING IN (AMERICAN) ENGLISH: (Pronunciation For Non-Native Speakers) Do you want to add some great English popular music or a little jazz to your choir repertoire, but your singers' accents are too heavy? Even painful? In this workshop, you will be introduced to ten easy steps to improving your choir's (and your own) (American) English.

FROM PERFORMANCE TO "SHOWTIME"

What makes one choir fascinating to watch on stage, while another, just as musical, is boring? How can a choir captivate an audience? What are the secrets of taking a choir from simply giving a choral performance to giving a "show"? Using known exercises from the field of acting, this workshop can totally change the way your choir sees and presents itself!

UPGRADING YOUR SHOW

Are you preparing for a major show or competition? Need an outsider's view of things? A second opinion? This workshop's agenda is to see and hear YOUR choir's repertoire and note the strong and weak points of your performance, point out the areas that could be improved upon along with specific suggestions as to how to upgrade the show. Useful, to the point and effective!