VOCAL

Vocal, choral, a cappella – all things singing!
Book Michael for a workshop, or commission an arrangement: mdhmusicuk@gmail.com

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Thrilled to have had the opportunity to work on Sing: Ultimate A Cappella.
Privileged to have worked with talented, fun, humble and hard-working groups.
My episode had BCGC7, Exeter Illuminations, The Apple Blossoms, Aneurhythms, Ultrasounds, and they were an absolute dream to work with.

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Testimonials from recent vocal workshops:

“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.”

“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????!!”

“Michael ran inspiring workshops for a group of 70 students and was absolutely captivating.  He was well prepared and helped the students to be creative, to collaborate and to have fun along the way”

As a teacher and musical director with a decade of experience, MDH knows how to deliver a focussed, efficient, rewarding and fun(ny) rehearsal. Under his direction In the Smoke have picked up awards including Voice Festival UK Community Champions (2012, 2015) and the prestigious Ward Swingle Award for Originality (2013). MDH works regularly with male and female voices – teens and adult – to get the best possible sound from an ensemble for the arrangement or composition under rehearsal. He has extensive experience in building performances for small gigs in pubs to ones in larger off-West End theatre spaces, as well as lots of a cappella recording experience and the competition preparation mentioned above. Check out the video below for a little sample, and email mdhmusicuk@gmail.com if you might like to work with MDH.

In 2016 MDH received a commission from the Royal Opera House (…I know right!) to prepare 6 arrangements of classic opera pieces from throughout history in more contemporary styles to be used by their Education department.  Have a listen:

At the Voice Festival UK Community Competition 2015, MDH won the Outstanding Arrangement Award

The judges said:
“AMAZING, sensitive and mature voicing and arranging”
“Very clever arrangement”

What do you think?  Watch the video here:

MDH has arranged for a wide range of ensembles – instrumental, vocal or mixed – the most fun of the recent ones being for the Channel 4 News Team’s party piece at the charity event Newsroom’s Got Talent.  Email mdhmusicuk@gmail.com with your requirements to get your own tailor-made musical morsel.

There’s a unique satisfaction that comes from arranging for a cappella, especially for your own group. You get to engage with some of the truly great songs and really get to know them in intimate detail. Then you put some of your own creativity into them, trying all the time to reveal and illuminate what made the song so special to you in the first place, but in a fresh way. Finally, when you get to sing it and give it a life off the page with your trusted a cappella group and they render it just right and enjoy singing it, you get a pretty amazing feeling.

I love to arrange. I love arranging cliched old songs to give them a new lease of life, but I also love tackling the ‘un-arrangeable’ songs too (as I hope the list below demonstrates), and using them as a springboard to new sounds and new rehearsal challenges and techniques.

I have arranged extensively for a cappella (most notably for In the Smoke and Out of the Blue), but can happily arrange for other genres and media. A full list of my arrangements to date is below. Email mdhmusicuk@gmail.com if you’d like one of them for your group, or (even more excitingly) you want to commission an exclusive new arrangement from MDH.
Here are some samples:

List of arrangements by MDH to date:

2000 Miles – The Pretenders
21 Guns – Green Day
A Place Nobody Can Find – Sam & Dave
About You Now – Sugababes
Acapella – Kelis
Baba O Riley – The Who
Be Thou My Vision – Traditional Irish Hymn
The Boys of Summer – Don Henley
Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie – trad, after Bruce Molsky
Chandelier – Sia
Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk – Rufus Wainwright
Classic Rap Battle – Run DMC, Salt n Pepa, MC Hammer, Jay Z
Don’t Do It – Marvyn Gaye/The Band
Everybody’s Free – Rozalla/Quindon Tarver
Ex Factor – Lauryn Hill
Fix You – Coldplay
Fools Gold – The Stone Roses
Get By – Talib Kweli
Get Ready – The Temptations
Hard Times – Gillian Welch
Here Come The Girls/Let’s Hear it for the Boy – Ernie K. Doe/Deniece Williams
Heroes – David Bowie
Hey There Delilah – Plain White Ts
Hot Knife – Fiona Apple
Into the Void – Nine Inch Nails
Love In An Elevator – Aerosmith
Love Shack – The B52s
Martha – Tom Waits
Mele Kalikimaka – Hawaiian Christmas Song
A Musicals Medley (see above)
Nessun Dorma – Puccini
New York, New York – Frank Sinatra
No – Meghan Trainor
No Air – Jordin Sparks & Chris Brown
Oh My Sweet Carolina – Ryan Adams
Oliver James – Fleet Foxes
Retrograde – James Blake
Road Trippin – Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Russian Roulette – Rihanna
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town – Christmas Classic
She Will Be Loved – Maroon 5
Sledgehammer – Peter Gabriel
Style – Taylor Swift
Tears Dry On Their Own – Amy Winehouse
Thinking of You – Katy Perry
Ticket to Ride – The Beatles
Titanium/Bulletproof – Sia/La Roux
Umbrella – Rihanna
Under The Boardwalk – The Drifters
Use Somebody – Kings of Leon
Walkin’ Man – Seasick Steve
Waterfalls – TLC
When You Were Mine – Prince
Wild Mountain Thyme – Traditional Scottish