Music Off the Page An Improvisation Course for Instruments and Voice
Michael GeesMusic Off the Page
An Improvisation Course for Instruments and Voice
For professionals and amateurs, singers and instrumentalists
Start of course: Thursday, 4 November 2027, 3 pm
End of course: Sunday, 7 November 2027, after the showcase
Fees
Active participation including accommodation and meals
Regular price: €620.00
SUPER EARLY BIRD
€558.00 · 10% discount
when booking more than 6 months before the course starts
EARLY BIRD
€589.00 · 5% discount
when booking 4 to 6 months before the course starts
Further options for active and passive participation are available.
In this course, music is created in the moment, with no set plan, out of what the group is hearing and playing right then. [First name] Gees invites everyone who enjoys experiencing improvisation and would like to try it for themselves.
You don’t need any experience in improvising. All instruments and voices are welcome, amateurs and professionals alike. There is no selection process and no audition. Simply register.
Gees works with the whole group, in small ensembles and with individuals [please check]. He starts from what each participant brings and awakens the joy of making music that often gets lost when practising from sheet music. In a trusting atmosphere, everyone finds their own way in.
Nothing is required, anything is possible.
"It's Thursday, November 4, at 3 p.m. We'll meet in the Forum Artium hall and make music. Without sheet music. We'll improvise – or actually, we'll compose, but we won't write anything down. Instead, we form small or large ensembles, depending on the occasion, and bring together what each of us wants to hear. Through playing and harmony, a different, 'new,' and certainly unheard-of music emerges, one that none of us would have come up with alone. There are no false notes, but rather an interplay of intentions. And the search for someone who recognizes our own idea and responds to it. Or, conversely, the enthusiasm for another's idea and the desire to support it, to provide (developmental) assistance, and to bear (shared) responsibility.
To get started, we build on one another as we play our (first) names and their meanings, layer harmonies, explore their melodic potential, practice lively counterpoint, lead or follow each other, invent responsories, solos, and accompaniments, conduct each other (instant composing), set to music moods or situations (sorrow, exhilaration, enchantment, telling a story to a child, etc.), and experiment with simple musical forms (art song, song, scherzo, rondo). And, of course, with the participants' creative ideas, because that's what it's all about: experiencing that imagination and presence of mind are essential, and that collaborative improvisation is also a social training ground.
On Sunday morning, we'll play in front of small or large audiences, or perhaps just for ourselves, a kind of showcase of our work. Here, the focus is not on what has become, i.e., a 'finished' piece, but on the process of becoming itself, on the way in which music becomes a language through which we think of connections. And, of course, to encourage our listeners to discover their own self-efficacy." (Michael Gees)
class
At the age of three, the piano is his favourite toy, at eight he wins the Steinway competition and receives a scholarship to the Salzburg Mozarteum. But the ‘child prodigy’ runs away from school, college and home, works as an excavation assistant and goes to sea. In 1974, he was given the opportunity to continue his music studies, which he had abandoned. He becomes known as a song pianist and gives concerts all over the world. His playing revives the tradition of free fantasising. In doing so, he breaks new ground. In 2001, he opens the Consol Theatre, which he founded. Here, children, young people and adults are encouraged to realise their own artistic impulses. Songs and vocal improvisations with Christoph Prégardien, Julia Kleiter, Anna Lucia Richter and Bella Adamova have been released on Challenge Classics and more recently on the Czech label Supraphon.
Solo productions such as ImproviSatie, Beyond Schumann and Bach-Mendelssohn adaptations show Michael Gees in his element of creative handling of the musical text.