Performance Le Rêve with Arnaud Lechat (clarinet, flutes, drums, voice) and Zhan Ya Chun (dancer)
“Le Rêve” (The Dream), a musical and dance performance created by Arnaud Lechat, Mark Van Tongeren and dancer Zhan Ya Chun inspired by the painting “Le rêve” by Post-Impressionist French painter Henri Rousseau.
Location: National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University Art Center (1001 University Road, Hsinchu 300093, Taiwan , student activity center 2nd and 3rd floor)
《夢境》是一部由貓阿諾 （Arnaud Lechat）、馬克．范．湯可鄰（Mark Van Tongeren）和詹雅淳共同創作的音樂與舞蹈表演，靈感來自法國後印象派畫家亨利．盧梭（Henri Rousseau）的畫作《夢境》（英文: The Dream; 法文: Le Rêve）。音樂帶領我們深入這幅描繪一位女子在伊甸園裡，被野獸和神秘音樂家環繞的畫作中。
Looking for RESONANCE, our annual 8-day retreat to sharpen your overtones, to sound more crisp and full, and to learn specific overtone singing techniques? Look at the old announcement to learn about the program, save the 2024 dates and check back for more details soon.
or how to combine the art of writing meaningful non-sense texts with hypnosis methods
Next week I am teaching a group of hypnosis students in Taipei. They are the students of a man who goes by the nickname of La Mian (ramen, or Japanese thick noodles) who is specialized in hypnosis and teaches and applies it in a wide range of methods. He came to my workshop Ocean of Voicesrecently, a 3-day exploration of the richness of musical traditions around the world (focusing on the voice). We had several amazing sessions where everyone went through his or her own transformations while singing, chanting, drumming, playing, or just listening to everyone else. Paths to change the body, change the mind and empower your creative imagination through the voice: a dynamic key or bridge that sits in between the body and mind, working its logical and illogical ways in both directions.
Photos taken during the Oceaen of Voices of workshop in Nantou, Taiwan. Above, La Mian with the Bunun people from XinYi. Below, session during the workshop.
You could call the logical part the verbal: the voice as speech, as reason and gossip.
You could call the illogical part transverbal: the voice as sound and music, as noise and non-sense.
Transverbal is a term Michael Vetter coined to group together, and give purpose to, his vast corpus of creative work, in music, in visual arts, in writing. It led, among other things, to his writing of okyo’s, which is Japanese for sutras. His sutras were not Buddhist texts, but used the sounds of the Japanese language as a template from which he created ‘texts’ without meaning. It was not merely a capricious thing, a joke, or an anti-religious sentiment. Vetter was serious about it. He had practised chanting and reciting actual sutras for year after year during his 13 year stay in Japan, going about the streets begging for alms or performing ceremonial. But, in a true Zen vein, he would not eschew the occasional humorous twist in his own okyos either.
I got to know Michael Vetter’s okyos in the mid 1990s and was impressed with their form and sound and Vetter’s precise reasoning for why he created them. Later I began to write my own occasional okyos. Last year I decided to write an okyo every day for one year, to commemorate Michael’s birth (in 1943) and passing (in 2013), now eighty and ten years ago. I shape these okyos, naturally, but they also shape me, and invite me or teach me to push for new ideas about sound, language and symbol. Here is one example which I will take to the Hypnokyo workshop:
Here is another one
And here is one that you can listen to in the video, below:
So next week my okyos are going to be tested by students of hypnosis. They learn a range of sounding techniques that could enhance or expand their hypnosis practise. I am really looking forward to see what they will do with it, and hope I can be their guinea pig to test the efficacy of the okyos. Not long ago, hypnosis was regarded as somewhat occult, esoteric and strange. In recent years it has become more widely accepted and it began to loose its strangeness in public opinion. The approach now seems to be more practical: it is yet another way for us – complicated, sensitive and often limited and hyperrational human beings – to understand the mysteries of life and self, and to make sense of the world around us in new, more attuned ways.
You can enjoy listening to one of my okyos in this video (thanks to Sky for editing).
And I will read this week’s episode of one of my favorite newsletters, which happens to be devoted to clinical hypnosis.
On 12/12/2021 we started the founding of the TOSA, or Taiwan Overtone Singing Association. It was an old dream of mine to have a more solid vehicle for my work and that of others in the field of overtone singing. But lacking reading and writing skills in Chinese I was unable to give that wish a concrete form. But then my close collaborators Sunny Chen and Jackal Mei began to question me about this and make suggestions about how to let this community grow and organise some bigger events. By now there are quite some people who have studied overtone singing with me or with other local practitioners, or with foreign teachers (often from Inner Mongolia or Tuva). There are several skilled performers and others who are improving their skills rapidly. I tend to be a bit of a loner in my work in overtone singing, but I think the time has come to really help others flower if they wish to become good overtone singers. And to show more people the beauty of this technique in all its forms, whether artistic or therapeutic, traditional or modern.
TOSA members performing on January 1 at Mei Garden Restaurant, Taipei
In the end it was Sunny Chen who has done endless amounts of paperwork to have the first small meeting of founders last December. My heartfelt thanks to her and all those who signed up as founders. The next step is to go public, and this will happen right after Chinese New Year, on February 19. On that day our chairman Sky Tseng will tell more about bigger and smaller events we are going to host every year; about a practising group to brush up your overtone singing and chanting; about concerts we will jointly attend or important books and pieces or CDs we will discuss. Professor Chung Minder, or taimu as he is known to many, will look back to twenty years of overtone singing in Taiwan, and perhaps look forward too. My old friends, and long-time overtone singing lovers (and love-couple in the first place) Wei-Lin and Qi-Chung will do a presentation, and so do I: this serves as the upbeat to a full concert we are preparing for later this year.
To make all of this happen, we need to reach a minimum of 45 members by January 28 (and not by February 19, as we thought before). We hope you will consider to sign up this month and give our association a flying start. A little extra support at this point is much needed since only a small inner circle of people knows about this initiative. Once we get started in February we can reach out to more people.
At the end of 2019, in fact around the Winter Solstice on December 21, we did the first Voice Yoga Retreat here in Taiwan. A wonderful recollection of the best stuff I have done during my 7 seven years of weekly Voice Yoga classes. It was beyond expectation: fantastic weather, great location, wonderful students, and a great three-person-strong core team (Sunny Chen, Jackal Mei, me) to take care of everything.
Most of all, we all experienced a nice flow between yogic and other exercises, sound and body improvisations, eating cakes and drinking Jackal’s homebrewn coffee, meditating, listening, chanting, learning about my methods and ‘vision.’ People came from all over the place and all walks of life, and most were new to Voice Yoga.
One student, Guang Guang, wrote an excellent report in Chinese about everything we did, in Chinese. I reproduce it here, with an autotranslation at the bottom of this page. Jackal Mei made some great photos, and there’s a couple of myself too. Many thanks to Guang Guang and Jackal for the words and images, and to Sunny !
We’ll do another Voice Yoga Retreat later this year on the beautiful, relaxed East Coast of Taiwan, where the pace is slow, weather seems to be nearly always good, birds sing loudly and the ocean is never far away. Get on the maillinglist for updates.
Because there are always many good friends around me, then put into a path. at the beginning, the leaves share the voice with me, and let me plant seeds in my heart…
So recently, I went to experience a sound yoga,
The teacher who taught is the mark of the pan-Yin.
I love his selfless and loving sharing
And take care and feel every one of us
When the first class said
The voices made here are all about the moment.
There is no bad right or wrong, every voice is right…
Let me feel free to feel at ease
First night
Mark is very natural to mix everyone’s voices together in space, let each other’s strange partner, quickly flowing, just two hours, my whole body is dancing.
/ breathing practice
A lot of things to feel in this practice,
I am also practicing to practice the feeling
Where to breathe, where to go, expand or shrink…
Never thought about what happened so naturally,
But these two recent courses are reminding this thing, that is the moment.
/ vowel triangle
Love to play with the vowel triangle
But I will find myself very short in this,
Will also want to work with other people
Make your own rhythm between perfection and coordination
Oh ~ suck ~
Oh ~ Ah ~ one
/ the ocean of sound
With the imitation of a natural voice,
Let your voice be thrown into the ocean
The Forest, the pond, the water, the swamp, the swamp, the sky, everything, the sound of the earth.
Who likes to share quietly, she feels like she’s shiny, so let the voice come out on her own…
So conscious body, I’m still on my way to practice
/ deep listening
Voice together in the outdoors,
Listen to the sound of the space and follow
Listen to the sound of not, create
In the way.
Made a contemporary music
I love this fusion melody.
/ surprise
Surround a circle and make a few voices with Mark,
Close your eyes and close your eyes
A few sounds without rules
Then slowly,
Mark puts the nissan into the circle
Close your eyes in the circle and enjoy the melody
Mark is singing faster and faster
Getting more and more specific
Starting to find something wrong
Open your eyes and look at mark
He smiled at me
She has already learned it early.
Yes, it’s really what I thought
The students laugh at one after one.
Mulberry finally realized the chú le of this party
I am in tears to accept everyone’s singing
This moment is so touching
So beautiful ~ so beautiful ~
/ Winter Solstice Lights out
Surround the candles with a peaceful night, close your eyes with the feeling of stars, the sound of nature that surround us, like the stars that have fallen in the grass, the sound of everything.
/ sana ceremony
Classmate Blues on the night for you all the night
First experience ceremony, the sana drum burst out my whole body current, under the protection of the guardian spirit, I felt the process, the jungle, the speed, the dark spin, then the snake that came out, finally let myself slowly pull away, see one Deer stop
Lithuania was called by the drum of the drum to run
It also dance, the whole field, sitting or moving.
Every world, fantasy world ~
/ vowel
I am deeply aware of my voice.
Where did the sound go in the resonance body?
Mark said
Where the body and the sound will be resonance
But but
Ideas can also let the voice go where you want him to go
At the end everyone’s voice shakes,
All have different discoveries
This makes me think the voice is so funny
Everyone’s body feels so unique
/ breathing rhythm
The difference in the length of breathing,
Can also be a beautiful song
I’m enjoying this chapter too
The sum of each instrument
It’s a movement of life.
/ Pan-voice solo
One afternoon mark singing for everyone
Sitting and lying free
It was a cloudy afternoon.
While a pan-Tone Melody keeps on the these
All I hear is the voice of an angel
Right now
The Golden sunshine outside the window goes through the pink curtains
Angel Light gentle on mark
I didn’t have time to take pictures of that one
But in my mind
My whole body is dancing
/ eight sound
Everyone’s voice is so unique and nice
There is the singing of the old soul in the voice of the old soul
Thinking of her guardian spirit grandma and love
It’s my turn to kick the card.
Is the flower God singing!!!
Clear and beautiful, so touching
When it was my turn, my head wanted to work
Later I told myself to forget it
What makes the voice is what is
Even though I know my voice is not even where I’m going
My Voice God is helping me find the level
Went for a couple of semitone
I just went to the place where I should go.
I can say too
That’s my precision in control of my semitone (allocated ~
After three days of playing
Very Loose, slow and amazing body all kinds of sour
I didn’t expect it. It was just a voice.
The body has all kinds of pull
But remember that Xin Xin said very well
(but I forgot what she said XD)
But after she said, I just had a moment.
Lala also shared mark in mechanical noise
Find out the rhythm of its regular rhythm
Make noise not just noise
Harvest a lot in three days,
Maybe I’m still in the aftershocks and feel slowly
The only part that knows what I know most
Probably I’m not that relaxing myself yet
The voice is too strange to me after all
But after these process
It’s better to lose the established impression of the voice in my childhood
The Color of the voice is so wide and infinite
Tell yourself, it’s just to play, go play!
Sound Yoga is yoga and impromptu
He is more than a voice,
Is the one that makes the heart, spirit and body
Thank you Yu Chih Lin for taking me on the pool
Thank you Xiaoying Ye for the link
Thank you Jackal Mei for the invitation XD
Thanks Mark Van Tongeren
Leading the experience of my experience
Had me so much fun on this sound tour…
Over enkele weken doe ik een dubbelconcert met Sinan Arat in de Oosterkerk in amsterdam. Hij is vooral bekend van zijn ney spel, zijn hoofdinstrument. Ik heb hem nog niet ontmoet maar we hebben wel overlegd hoe we het willen gaan doen. Vanwege ons beider voorliefde voor improvisatie hebben we besloten te proberen om niet twee solo-blokken te spelen met een beetje overlap, maar de uitwisseling aan te gaan. Ik ben al langer op zoek naar samenwerking met een goede fluitspeler. In Taiwan zijn die dun gezaaid, zeker spelers die een dergelijke rijke, luchtige klank produceren. Dat heb je natuurlijk in Japan met de shakuhachi en in India met de bansuri (die Sinan ook bespeelt). Maar ik werd helemaal stil van het spel van Sinan toen ik gisteren onderstaande video van hem bekeek. Van die prachtige, lange, rustige tonen, waarin de adem steeds doorklinkt, en daarmee de ziel van de speler – of van de muziek zelf zo je wilt.
Sinan bespeelt naast de ney rietfluit ook lijsttrommels en zingt, en hij heeft Indiase muziek bestudeerd. En aangezien ik de laatste jaren ook experimenteer met fluiten en met de Marrokaanse bendir lijsttrommel én omdat ik ook al jaren met Indiase muziek bezig ben, hebben we aardig wat overlap. Ik ben heel benieuwd hoe dat gaat uitpakken, zijn voornamelijk traditionele spel met mijn meer experimentele benadering.
Het concert is op zondag 15 juli en begint om 12:00
Gratis toegankelijk (donaties welkom).
Adres: Oosterkerk, Kleine Wittenburgerstraat 1, Amsterdam.
De dag ervoor doe ik een eendaagse workshop boventoonzang, ook in de Oosterkerk in Amsterdam, voor wie wil kennismaken met deze techniek.
Beluister ook het mooie interview met Sinan rondom de VPRO sessie.
“Sinan Arat uit Turkije speelt en improviseert op de ney (Turkse fluit) en laat zich inspireren door de Ottomaanse en Anatolische traditie. Hij wordt begeleid door Alper Kekeç op percussie. In het interview met Giovanca vertelt Sinan hoe hij kennis leerde maken met de ney.”
Here is another one
