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LOCATED IN WALES working nationally and internationally FOR THE CURIOUS opening worlds of performance

GIVING VOICE
INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF THE VOICE

Giving Voice 12: Hearken! Do you Hear An Angel?

10th - 14th November 2010, Teatro Era, Pontedera, Italy

Join us for an uplifting compendium of voice workshops, performances, talks, and lecture-demonstrations reflecting voices, methods and modes from around the world.

Giving Voice springs from a strong belief in the voice’s ability to communicate beyond language and cultural difference, and that working with the voice can allow people, from wherever they come, to enjoy and value the riches of difference as well as the recognition and celebration of a common humanity. At its heart is the idea of koinonia, in the ancient Greek sense of choros and congregation, encountering ourselves and each other through the voice.

Giving Voice attracts some of the world’s finest performers and voice teachers. Workshop teachers and performers at Giving Voice 12: Hearken! Do you Hear An Angel? include: Victoria Hanna (Israel), Marianka Sadovska (Ukraine), Giovanna Marini (Italy), Francesca della Monica (Italy), Vadhat Ensemble (Iran) and Teatr ZAR (Poland).

Giving Voice 12: Hearken! Do You Hear An Angel?

That missing fundamental that we ‘think’ we hear? Is it an angel passing by?

This edition of the Giving Voice Festival - GV12: Hearken! Do You Hear An Angel? - takes as thematic constellation two vital organs for the voice - the heart and the ear - aiming to explore auditory pathways to and from the heart, through sound, song and musicality.

Now for some heartwork (Rainer Maria Rilke)

In invoking angels, we are purposely not locating the ‘heart’ in the chest, the hippocampus, or the solar plexus, nor the ear primarily in the head or the brain; instead sourcing the physiological and analogic valencies of both organs in perception and reception as ‘whole body’ process: where the body - the heart - acts as echo chamber and vessel of inner and outer aural universes, the world as sound, receiving and creating the other, omniprescienctly in [re]cognition of hope.

If you want to know me, look inside your heart. (Lao Tzu)

We wish to reassert in ethical terms the primacy of the ear and the act of listening with the idea of the ‘re-sounding listener’, where the assimilative sense of hearing is ‘tuned’ and attuned through active listening to represent, reflect, and symbolise psychological, spiritual and social action.

“When angels visit us, we do not hear the rustle of wings, nor feel the feathery touch of the breast of a dove; but we know their presence by the love they create in our hearts.” (unknown)

In calling angels, we are playfully evoking the missing fundamental, the ‘virtual pitch’, the immaterial, the phantom in and of the imagination. We are also purposively evoking perceptions of angels as primarily feminine, and so provocatively invoking the high – and feminine – voice, as the dominant voice, the ‘melodic’ and monodic, and the source of a fundamental ‘harmonic’.

Embracing melodic organization, cadence and emotional affect as essential modal components, Giving Voice 12: Hearken! Do You Hear An Angel? explores the voice monophonically in terms of ‘coloratura’, ‘toccata’ and ‘cadenza’, where harmonics, ornamentation, timbre and register presage the polyphony, communality, counterpoint and pluralism of the many ‘voices ‘of self and society.

Giving Voice is an established biennial international event mounted in Wales by the Centre for Performance Research (CPR). It aims to advance the appreciation and understanding of the expressive voice and celebrate its many and varied manifestations across time and culture. Sharing ideas and practice through workshop, performance, and discussion, the festival brings together those - performers, teachers, scholars, healers - who have an interest in the voice but who may not necessarily meet in the usual course of their practice. This twelfth edition of Giving Voice is hosted by, and conceived in collaboration with,Teatro Era, Pontedera.

“For me, ‘Giving Voice’ sounds always a note of renewal of hope and expansion and springing ideas. I burn my candle both ends and in the middle and am re-ignited…That extraordinary dissolving of barriers and triggering of joy that distinguishes Giving Voice from any other workshop gathering that I know. The personal input that you all make, the personal investment, pays off one hundred percent in the humanity of the experience...You have a genius by now for finding the right people and bringing them together in the same place so that spontaneous combustion of ideas and creativity explode.”
Kristin Linklater, Author of Freeing the Natural Voice

“Giving Voice was enlightening, educational, inspirational, and very powerful. The work, the conversations, the camaraderie – all of it was of a calibre rarely to be found anywhere else. I feel honoured to have been a small part of this extraordinary event.”

“Each time I attend I am impressed with the quality of the presentations, workshops, and performances. This festival is by far one of the best offered internationally. The work that you do is cutting edge and draws some of the best practitioners and scholars from all over the world. I do not find at other conferences and festivals the same level of discourse and experimentation, the wide range of work and body of knowledge. Thank you!”

Past participants of Giving Voice

Bookings will be taken at the beginning of September but you can register your interest now by email to receive priority booking and a full programme of events as soon as it is available.