New songs co-written with the great Ben Sparks

…and sung with full-on winter colds (that’s the excuse anyway….!)

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Singing Workshop #2

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

IMG_0177We 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????!!”

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Singing Workshop #1

January and February 2015 – 2 great, and very different workshops

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Here I am at The Voice Festival UK’s Take the Stage – featuring groups of students from St George’s Catholic School in Kilburn, Glyn School in Surrey and William Ellis School in Kentish Town.  We managed to cover lots of challenging exercises AND put together an arrangement of Uptown Funk that had The Swingles (who led the 3rd workshop of the day) tapping their feet and singing along!  They were there curating the London A Cappella Festival and the other organisers were impressed too:

“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”
Jessica Hill, London A Cappella Festival
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London-set video from Celena Fernandez

Check out this excellent video for her song Heartbreak City that I produced and played guitar on…

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FRESH BATCH OF SONGS!

Message me with the ones you think are most likely to be commercially successful and if they pay for my house I’ll let you come and visit.

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CHRISTMAS UKULELE COURSE!

If you like it – buy an album (although it has no ukulele on it…)

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New Songs

Writing songs is fun

These are what my family are getting for christmas this year! #freelance£££
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Great gig! – Donate to Libby’s Marathon Fund!

Some fantastic artists and lovely people to boot.
Donate at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=LibbyWarlow

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No Man’s Land – Lest we Forget

Better than Joss Stone?  But of course!

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Final video from ROAD MOVIE

now buy it by clicking the link to the right.

CDs available at all gigs, and soon for mail order.

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