Masterclass "Making music differently"
Michael GeesMaking music differently – playing freely – inventing your own music
For professionals and amateurs, singers and instrumentalists
Course repertoire: freely selectable
Workshop and Exhibition
€ 830,00 Course fee/active for professionals
€ 780,00 Course fee/active for students
€ 590,00 Course fee for passive participation
It's Wednesday, October 29, 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 stimulate the listener, we will 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 (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.
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.