Workshops


Spring Workshops 2008

*****
Gwyn Roberts Workshop

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Cancelled! For details, contact aej11@verizon.net

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Reviews

John Tyson Workshop Review (2008)
John Tyson treated 14 recorder players to a delightful and informative workshop on January 12.  Both WRS members and non-members participated, a couple joining WRS in order to attend the workshop or as a result of it. 

He started by telling us that the recorder is the most natural of all instruments to play, creating no special requirements for the lips and mouth (embouchure), breathing, the fingers, or the position of the body.  Playing the recorder is most closely related to singing, and most of the time when we play recorder we should emulate the sound of the human voice.  We are not blowing against resistance (such as a reed), but just naturally producing sound by letting air in and out with the aid of the diaphragm and the muscles of the rib cage.  He had us do several blowing exercises with and without the recorder to demonstrate the naturalness and simplicity of producing sound on the recorder.

Except for two pieces, John selected all the music for us from www.laymusic.org, a site developed by a woman in the Boston Recorder Society who has studied with John and understands his philosophy.  All the music on this site, arranged for recorders, is presented without bar lines and is available to anyone to download and print out without charge.  There are large collections of works by Renaissance composers, including Byrd, Morley, and Dowland.  We played two, three, four, and five-part pieces by Susato, Morley, Pilkington, and Parabosco, among others.  While workshop participants, for the most part, had not played unbarred music, they caught on very quickly.  The only trick is to be sure you count the rests correctly.  John ended with the classic, “I’m in the Mood for Love,” arranged for four recorders and found in a compilation called Senior Prom, Songs We Once Danced To (Sweet Pipes). 

All agreed that this was a workshop definitely worth attending.



 Shelley Gruskin Workshop Review (2008)
by
Jayme Sokolow
On Saturday, March 15, 2008, WRS hosted a recorder workshop by Shelley Gruskin.  Shelley has been giving workshops at WRS for over 30 years.  By now, Shelly is basically a member of WRS and knows many of us by name.

There are few music teachers who possess Shelly’s gift of gentle humor and his ability to make insightful analogies between music and other things, from sports to the arts.  It is almost as enjoyable to hear Shelly discuss music as it is to play under his direction.  This year was no exception.  Shelley entertained and instructed 13 attendees with his wit and broad musical knowledge, and his insights into Renaissance and Baroque music.
 
This year’s workshop was dedicated to the music of two composers who are well-known to recorder players.  In the morning, the workshop focused on the sinfonia music of Johann Rosenmüller (1619-84), a German composer who spent the major part of his creative life in Italy and who was an important figure in the transmission of Italian styles to the north.  He incorporated the solo cantata and Italian operatic and instrumental styles into sacred music that was widely performed in Baroque Germany. 

After lunch, we played the music of Ludwig Senfl (1486-1543), the most significant representative of Netherlands-German music in German-speaking regions during the Reformation.  Senfl became a leading representative of the new style of music at the beginning of the Reformation, especially his lieder and motets.  We played a set of unusual music pieces by Senfl that incorporated Swiss-German folk music into a set of clever and challenging canonical pieces.

As always, participants left the workshop with a smile on their faces, a little wiser musically, and looking forward to another Gruskin workshop next year.

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