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.”
Explore the hidden dimensions of the human voice. Make music with overtones and new timbres. Listen to the world and to yourself with new ears. Learn how to use your voice as a powerful tool for transformation and better communication.
By taking time to breathe and to listen to all the ways in which the body and the world resonates, we open up an amazing path of discovery and creative, therapeutic learning. – Mark van Tongeren
What impressed us is the way of your teaching … subtle, perceptual, respective, creative, fun and updated. Thank you sincerely. – Una Kao
YOU, YOUR VOICE, AND YOUR BEING
How to find your own voice? How to be who you are? How not to be who you are, but to become someone else? Someone you wish to be?
How to feel your whole being resonating, alive, complete …. to feel at ease with yourself, and to be completely YOU while in the presence of others? To meet others around you who can also be themselves, without acting nicely, or keeping up appearances?
In Mark van Tongeren’s R E S O N A N C E course, music, and most of all, the human voice, is the foremost instrument to achieve precisely that goal. To reach into the greatest depths of your soul, to stir your mind and your thinking, even to change your physical body. To bring all these disparate ‘parts’ of ‘a single self’ together in a fully resonating whole, a symphony of vibrations, pulses, frequencies.
The backbone of this training program is the overtone singing technique. Overtones are like a world of their own residing within the timbres of your voice. You will deeply immerse yourself in the fundamental harmonic laws of musical sound We will come back again and again to change the way we listen and vocalise, opening up to the hidden dimension of overtones, the harmonics that our voices and ears know well but our minds know not. In an experiential and personalised way you will learn to express yourself better, using a fuller range and spectrum of your voice.
FOR WHOM?
We have welcomed all kinds of people in the R e s o n a n c e course, from white-collar workers and school teachers to art students and creative professionals, from computer experts to yoga teachers and people with voice problems, from male afficionadoes of Mongolian and Tuvan khöömei to classically trained soprano’s.
This course is aimed at anyone with an interest in or sensitivity for sound as a creative principle. and those seeking more balance in their live.
No previous musical experience is required. For students who have already done one or more workshops of overtone singing there will still be plenty to learn. If you are in doubt, contact us with your questions.
LANGUAGE
The course will be mostly conducted in English. Your interpreter Sunny Chen will summarise or translate entire parts of the course into Mandarin, depending on the needs.
PRICES, DISCOUNTS and BENEFITS
The price per participant is 17.500 NT$ for ten classes. The following discounts apply (only one per person):
* Students and seniors with valid identity cards for the duration of the course: 25 %.
* Early birds: 15 % if you register before October 20. Extended to November 5!
* Payment in smaller increments is possible.
TESTIMONIALS So much happiness and joy of being with you. And it’s where I find ME. I should sing it. Sing it for you. To let you know how much you give me.
Sky from Hsinchu
I really enjoy sound flowing out freely and impulsively. Although I am the singer, I am also the listener, I hear sound coming out of my mouth, naturally flowing. I feel sound is the language of the soul, something language cannot express. I really wish to learn overtone singing. I feel overtone singing opens up some unknown and unfathomable territories.
Amano from Hsinchu
YOUR GUIDE
Mark van Tongeren is a vocal performer working at the intersection of art and science. He has 25 years of experience in music and intermedial performance and holds a PhD in artistic research. He has traveled to the Altai, Mediterranean isles and Tibetan monasteries to learn from established masters. He is an international authority on the technique of overtone singing, both as a performer and author. He has taught at TNUA’s Music and Theatre Departments (2003-2004), National Chengchi University’s X-Lab (2012 – now) and at Canjune. He frequently collaborates with composers, improvisers, musicians and dancers in and outside Taiwan. He teaches and co-leads tours for Canjune and will lead the second musical tour to Tuva (Siberia) in Summer 2018.
10 days from December 24, 2017 to April 2018
10 AM – 17:30 PM.
Place: CanJune Training Centre, Daan Area.
4F, #3 , Lane 151, Fuxing S Rd. Sec. 2.
Registrations for the course or requests for the digital brochure:
In Chinese: ly.sunny.chen@gmail.com/ 0912-024-285 CHEN Sunny
In English: info@fusica.nl / 0910 382 749 Mark van Tongeren
Photo credit: Yi Ching Juan, Mark van Tongeren, Jiji Liu
In January I will be visiting the great team of Soundtherapy Hong Kong again to teach various workshops around the theme “hidden dimensions of the human voice.” There are 6 themes to chose from – or you can do them all:
Workshop 1: Breath, Prana & Movement
Workshop 2: Sound Journey, Ocean of Voices
Workshop 3: Art of listening
Workshop 4: Polyphony of the body
Workshop 5&6 : Inner Voice & Outer Voice
All workshops are either morning (10 am – 1 pm) or afternoon (2:30-5:30 pm), in Causeway Bay / WanChai.
More details + registration on the Soundtherapy Hong Kong website here and on Facebook.
Hong Kong image Vertical Horizon by Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze, who published the photobook Vertical Horizon.
This one-day workshop introduces the work of the influential musician-painter-poet-thinker Michael Vetter. He developed many tools to let students enter into a direct, open dialoge with art and creative processes. Combined with his well-informed reflections about art and spirituality, Vetter’s method makes music and visual arts accessible to many people, with or without an ‘art’ background. Very few artists cover the width and depth as Vetter does, while still being able to teach and inspire anyone from layman to professionals.
Michael Vetter (1943-2013) is probably best known as an overtone singer, but he spend at least as much time as an instrumentalist, painter, poet/writer, visual artist and educator. His life and work defied boundaries. He spent 13 years in Japan, pursuing intensive zen studies with two roshis (1970-1983). He visited Taiwan two times, exhibiting and creating new works, performing and teaching.
Vetter’s method makes music and visual arts accessible to many people, with or without an ‘art’ background. To continue Vetter’s line of creating and understanding art after his passing away in 2013, this workshop will introduce his methods to those who do not know him and go deeper for those who already know his work. The emphasis lies on practical, hands-on experience and getting a feeling for the overall, underlying connections between different art forms.
Program
The day is divided in four parts, which will be woven together to show how they are linked in Vetter’s integral approach to art, called Transverbal.
Heart sutra: The Hannya shingyo according to Michael Vetter. Okyo: Vetter’s approach to the Japanese approach to Indian Buddhist mantras. A practical exploration of transmutations. Voice: What is the voice? how can it teach us? Some of Vetter’s answers in theory, but as always practice comes first. Lines: Drawing lines, and understanding what simple lines can tell us about art and life. Bring paper and some colour pencils/pens.
For whom: Individuals interested in creative processes (visual, musical), as well as creative professionals seeking to deepen their skills and understanding of the arts. Motivation to try out new things is essential, skills are not essential. Language: English (with Chinese translation) Date/Time Sunday December 20, 10 AM until 5 PM. Lunch on your own (1-2PM). Place: Canjune Training Center Price: 1800 NT$ Discounts: students 20% (bring your ID) Participants: (min.) 8 – 20 (max.)
Info/registration
Interested? Get more inquiries from Mark (info@fusica.nl) or Yvonne (chichenlyv@gmail.com) or just register and we’ll send you the payment details. Call us at 0910382749 (Mark) / 0933178272 (Yvonne).
Meditations, contemplations and practices to get closer to yourself, to the body, to each other and to your surroundings. Listen with new ears to sound and silence. Explore the role of space and environment as sources for sound-making. Two days spent in the mountains to transform something you do all the time: a celebration of the ears!
Did you ever wonder why and how the world of sound can touch you so deeply? And what are the processes behind it? Did you believe your ears simply ‘register’ the sounds around you? Is it possible that you actually influence what you hear? Or can you learn from how others listen? Did you know there are many types of listeners and many ways of listening, such as holistic and analytical? Would you like to listen more actively, and ‘open your ears’ more? Can you ‘tune in’ yourself more to this world, or let this world attune to you? Do you want to let your ‘hearing’ become ‘listening’, and ‘listening’ become ‘understanding’?
During two days in the relative quietude of beautiful mountains in Hsinchu, we break through the habitual patterns of hearing so we can better perceive and understand the role of sound. This workshop is an opportunity to ‘hear yourself hear’ in new ways, and to reconsider what sound and music mean to you, also in everyday life.
The answers we find will be contemplated, imagined, sung, and expressed in words. We strike a neat balance between the verbal and non-verbal, the silent and the resonant, the action and the … passion. Leave the rattle and hum of everyday city life behind – celebrate the ears!
Program for these two days:
MORNINGS
Morning rituals: listen, awaken our ears, sensing the body, feeling the voice.
Do concrete exercises to transform the way we listen, through meditations, listening outside, making sounds together.
Explore spaces using only the ears.
AFTERNOONS
Listen to essential examples of ‘silent music’.
Find out what type of listener you are, learn about other ‘listening cultures’ and develop an active attitude towards your auditory perception.
Collaboratively create music with ‘sound objects’.
Talk about listening as a way to understand the world: to deeply attune our self to the vibrations surrounding us and emitted by us.
Listen to the many sounds of silence.
EVENING
Some good music? Make some noise? Some star-gazing? Good food!
FOR WHOM: Individuals interested in sound, music and contemplation; creative, health and spiritual professionals seeking to deepen their skills and understanding in the field of sound, vibration and awareness.
Language: English (with Chinese translation)
Date/Time: Sat. October 31 (10 AM) + Sun. November 1 (17 PM)
Place: Rainbow Mountain, Jianshi Township, Hsinchu County
Price: 6500 NT$
Includes: Local transport to/from station; lodging 1 night; 4 meals (lunch-diner-breakfast-lunch). We prepare some of the food ourselves. Let us know if you are into making delicious food!
Discounts: students 20% (bring your ID)
Participants: (min.) 8 – 15 (max.).
INFO/REGISTRATION
Interested? Get more inquiries from Mark (info@fusica.nl) or Yvonne (chichenlyv@gmail.com) or just register and we’ll send you the payment details. Call us at 0910382749 (Mark) / 0933178272 (Yvonne).
All photos in this post from www.vetter-transverbal.de
Today, December 7, 2014, it is one year ago since the German artist Michael Vetter passed away, shortly after turning 70. Several musical events commemorate the passing away of this visionary artist, who is best known as an overtone singer. Three weeks ago we had a Festival Transverbal here in Taipei, the German radio repeated DuO, a fantastic radio play by Michael Vetter and Natascha Nikeprelevic from 1997, and there will be a reprise of his Missa di Natale (1998) by his former students of the Diaphonisches Vokalensemble in Cologne (see links at end of the posting). But Michael Vetter did much more than making music, and here I will put his creative life and his critical mind in a wider perspective than is usually done.
painting ‘Altar’, 1960s
1. An outstanding and extremely productive visual artist
After spending many years of his youth already drawing and painting seriously, Vetter developed an extraordinary visual language of his own during the 1960s and 1970s, He used a wide range of techniques, from China ink drawings, paintings, watercolours and linocuts to ‘writing pieces’, perhaps his most far-fetching concept. Just like in music, Vetter was completely self-taught as a visual artist. Though he did of course absorb current techniques and styles, he drew much inspiration from Mediaeval techniques – a quite unfashionable source for artists in that period. His passion for great masters of the past was such, that as a teenager he already began collecting original Mediaeval volumes, which he apparently used as source material for his own techniques (he also kept hundreds of art books at home in recent years). If you ever heard Vetter talk about art – or read about his work in his own words – you know that his work was fully developed on a conceptual level: he was acutely aware of the peculiarities of all the major periods and styles in Western art of the second millennium, even of many artists and their development.
From ‘Buch der Zeichen’
2. Laying the basis of Western/contemporary overtone singing
Of course, overtone singing would not look the same if Vetter had not helped to define its modern, Western style. He educated dozens of students that became singers in their own right (some of them well-known), and inspired many more – in fact he blew away many listeners, who had never heard such things before, including myself. Again, Vetter did not just perform a trick, or ‘just make sounds’, like many overtone singers are tempted to do. His melodic-harmonic approach to overtones betrays deeper connections, like with his great example Johann-Sebastian Bach. Few overtone singers are able to achieve such clarity of tone and such variety in the development of their compositions / improvisations as Vetter did. Besides setting an example with his NG-RR techniques (for singing lower and higher overtones, respectively), he produced extensive learning materials for his students and developed at least one unique way of singing overtones I never heard anyone do.
Playing ‘Steinspiel’ in Vetter’s Academia Capraia, Italy
3. Beyond zen
Zen is too fashionable these days. You encounter the most obtuse uses of the word ‘zen’ in attempts to brand something as ‘spiritual’, ‘Asian’ and ‘cool’. Fortunately many people have also had genuine, first-hand zen experiences, among whom many artists. I think overall the transference of zen ideas to the West has led to some great artistic innovations. John Cage’s classes with the zen teacher Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki at Columbia University in the 1940s had far-reaching effects in every imaginable artistic discipline, well beyond the confines of his work as a composer. But Cage never sat cross-legged nor did he learn to meditate. Philip Glass, another big-name twentieth century composer who professed being influenced by Buddhism, did not have the kind of in-depth experiences that traditional students of Buddhism have. Vetter is one of few composers/musicians/artists who did go through the process more thoroughly. He observed daily morning meditations at his master’s shrine when he visited him, several months a year, while dedicating most his time to his own artistic work. He also spend several months a year at a monastery, where he took part in all the rituals, chanting, dressing up, begging for alms, et cetera.
For that reason, and for his superb grasp of art and aesthetics as a whole, I have high regard for the way he appropriated zen performing/visual art for his own artistic means. One of his best ideas is to transform the zen garden into a play, a dynamic process of moving and placing stones and other objects in an open-air surface. Another is his transformation of the okyo, the zen sutra’s. I will not go into those transformations here. Suffice it to say that the changes he made to these two zen traditions were well-informed, and in a way so much in tune with zen thought and practice, that they appear to be a logical step beyond traditional zen (as far as the overtone singing goes, monks disapproved when Vetter would slightly change the sound of his own okyos to amply certain harmonics).
From ‘Buch der Zeichen’
4. ‘The book of signs’: a 40+-year disciplined effort
Since 1972 or 1973 until his death, Vetter spent some time almost every day to work on a Magnus Opus of unusual breath: ‘Das Buch der Zeichen’ / ‘The Book of Signs’ (and that’s more than 40 years). In quick, improvised strokes, he would produce about 15-150 small China ink drawings. At the times I spend with him, he would do this after lunch. He carefully observed how the ink would flow, but as he continued to pull his brush across the paper, the ink would usually continue to flow. This would leave the final result undetermined by the time of his painting. He would continue to produce one drawing after another, mostly abstract, and pile them up while still wet. Then after 30 minutes or so, he would go through all the drawings one by one, carefully observing how the ink had settled. Like in some of his other work, it was his way of letting movement express itself, as it were, flowing through his hands not according to predetermined designs, but as an inevitable result of time unfolding. Each drawing is like a testimony of the flow of time expressed through spontaneous hand movements. I do it myself from time to time, like here, for example, as an ode to Michael. But I realised a few years ago, that if there is one thing I would wish I had (or could develop still), it was Michael’s discipline.
title unknown
5. humour
O yes, you could have great laughs with Michael. He was full of wit, full of stories of his own adventures, of poems he could recite by heart (and certainly not the romantic ones, but absurd and perplexing ones). He had this mix of seriousness with lightness, bringing everything in balance again after the mind-boggling, or physically-straining or emotionally-charged practicing was done. In his work there were always these unexpected twists, which sometimes turned out very funny. He once told me a story of an invitation to an annual congress of recorder players. Vetter first made his name as an avant-garde recorder player, who completely redefined the instrument in the 1960s. Some of the greatest composers of our time wrote new pieces for him in the 1960s. But when Vetter was heralded as the former avant-garde innovator at the European Recorder Festival in 2006, he noticed that all the vigor had gone. The new generation of students played the radical works of the 1960s almost like classical pieces. What had been thrilling and upsetting 40 years earlier, now sounded tame. Vetter himself played one of J.S. Bach’s violin sonata’s on his recorder at the festival, but not without making the necessary adjustments in timing and phrasing, due to the transference of the piece from violin to recorded. This shocked many a conservative lover of Bach music, so much so, that just like in the 1960s, people left the concert hall, some of them protesting loudly. He recalled this episode with much enjoyment, and though it is not a typical example of Vetter’s humor as such, I treasure those moments when he would tell of all the strange and funny moments in his carreer – or simply tell a joke.
In this class we use the voice in its immense richness, not only as a musical instrument, but as our primary tool to communicate and exist through/with/for/from sound. In Voice Yoga, sound, silence and resonance become a mirror for the self. The sounds produced by ourselves, allows us to ‘see’ ourselves more clearly, to hear what’s living deep inside us. In ever-growing cycles of creating and perceiving we learn about music and sound, about ourselves and about the environment. A ‘quintessence of science, sound and self’ as I called it in my book Overtone Singing.
DATES AND TIME FOR 2014
EVERY THURSDAY, 10-12 AM
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JANUARY,9/ 16/ 23/ 28
FEBRUARY,13/ 20/ 27
MARCH,6/ 13/ 27
APRIL,3/ 10/ 17/ 24
MAY,1/ 8/ 15/ 22/ 29
JUNE,5/ 12/ 19
AUGUST,21/ 28
SEPTEMBER,4/ 11/ 18/ 25
OCTOBER,2/ 9/ 16/ 23/ 30
NOVEMBER,6/ 13/ 27 [no class on November 20]
DECEMBER,4/ 11/ 18/ 25
[/table]
PLACE
Canjune Training Centre, 4th Floor, number 3 , Lane 151, Fuxing South Road, Section 2, (this is about 20 meters from the corner of FuXing South Road, go up the stairs to the hairdresser and take the elevator to 4F; if you’re early the streetdoor may be closed). Nearest MRT: Technology Building (10 min. walk). Telephone training centre: 02 – 27 00 72 91.
RESERVATION
Please notify us of your intention to join the class, by sending a text-message (SMS) with your name to 09-10 38 27 49.
For those unfamiliar with Voice Yoga, the information about Voice of Dao posted earlier still stands.