Second was in February with the JuditSingers – a lovely day in a beautiful village outside Northampton.

We did some brain-bending exercises on intervals and rhythm, and then worked collaboratively to build a piece of music from different layered melodies (a real triumph of the outcome being greater than the sum of its parts thanks to RIGOROUS creative discussion!).  The other highlight was a beautiful, un-conducted performance of The Parting Glass – one of my all-time favourite folk songs…

…and a splendid bring-a-dish lunch!

Lovely group of people, who make a lovely sound – go see them sometime!

https://localgiving.com/charity/juditsingers

Some quotes from the day:

“a day well spent with such a personable young man who is obviously an extremely good teacher… Michael’s techniques were particularly useful for me in helping to understand the need to listen”

“I thought Michael was great and I found everything useful. I would love to do it again.”

“He had a really original, fresh approach. Got us doing things that might be a little outside our comfort zone but everyone was open to ‘having a go’! It showed that we could manage to sing without the music in front of us, sometimes.”

“I thought the workshop was brilliant.  Apart from being great fun, I really liked that Michael didn’t make any assumptions about our musical skills…I think/hope he has given us all more confidence in our abilities particularly in being able to learn The Parting Glass so quickly and to be able to sing it without the music!  As for Michael, I though he mixed humour with the learning process very well and was very good at keeping us under control and attentive! When are we doing it again????!!”