Sens-Sing Workshop and Vulgia Collaborative Improv Performance

Calling out to anyone interested in interacting with or listening to the magic of intuitive, improvised music-making in response to natural soundscapes.

Everyone is welcome for both events; the workshop and the performance!

• For the afternoon workshop, there are no specific skills required, simply an curiosity and openness about vocal improvisation, meditative listening, and intuitive communication with beautiful field recordings of the natural environment.

• For the evening performance, of course all welcome! Please scroll down for more info.

Come along and dive in!

A unique afternoon voice workshop and immersive evening performance at Open Source Arts on Saturday 3rd June, exploring vocal improvisation, meditative listening and intuitive communication with exquisite field recordings of natural soundscapes from around the world.

You are welcome to join for either or both offerings, with a discount if you attend both the workshop and the performance.

Sens-sing is a participatory workshop to explore the acts of listening with and sounding with. It is an opportunity for sonic collaboration with the more-than-human in which the human voice is just one of the many voices in the natural world’s biophony.

Through meditative listening to field recordings of natural soundscapes of Iceland, England and Spain, guided vocalizations in response and collaborative vocal improvisation, participants will experience embodied listening and intuitive vocal communication with the natural soundscape as a collective expression of kinship.

Activities will include group vocalizations with the roaring of an Icelandic glacier, group vocal improvisation with a storm in a volcanic Catalan forest, breathing with a stream in the Lake District and responding to the birdcalls of Menorca’s wetlands.

Sens-sing premiered at the International Teaching Artist Conference, ITAC 6 (Oslo 2022) and it is going to be part of the International Symposium on Soundscape, Advanced Music and AI (ISSAM) in collaboration with Sónar (Barcelona 2023).

Vulgia Collaborative is a concert tour across Europe of improvisation-based performances in collaboration with a variety of local musicians and visual artists.

For this show, Laura Guarch will be joined by Leeds musicians and singers Georgie Buchanan, Emma Coleman and Alana Middleton on harp, cello and violin, as well as voices, to create an extra-special, one-time-only, immersive performance.

Inspired by the musical material of Guarch's most recent release, Vulgia {vulnerable and wild}, Laura improvises using her voice as an instrument in combination with the live processing of field recordings from Menorca, Iceland and other soundscapes of Europe.

The collaboration with musicians of different instruments and genres makes each occasion unique and generates an ephemeral encounter in which to be present.

Néfur (singer and artist Laura Guarch) is a Catalan vocalist, composer, field recordist and performance maker. Shortlisted in the BBC Sound of the Year Awards 2021 for a field recording of ice melting in Solheimajóküll’s glacier lagoon, Laura processes natural sounds of threatened environments and combines them with her voice in original compositions, workshops and performances.

Her debut album KRËODYLIA led to her being shortlisted as best emerging artist in the Catalan music awards Premis Enderrock 2022, and Guarch is currently working on her second album, Glöicem, whose music will be purely made of the Icelandic glaciers sounds and vocals. The project will inhabit a new, contemporary mythology of glaciers exploring the energies, feelings and myths beyond the ice through the creation of an album, a podcast series and an AV live show.

Other projects include live choral promenade performances exploring river rights and the loss of public space in cities, a commissioned composition made solely from field recordings of Menorca’s wetlands and Laura’s vocals, and a 1-week collaborative lab in Berlin, ending with a collective performance finale.

She is currently touring across Europe and the UK collaborating with a variety of musicians and visual artists on improvisation-based live performances from her most recent album, Vulgia.

For more information on Néfur (Laura Guarch), have a look at her website here.

It is really exciting to welcome this singer and artist to Leeds for the first time and this will be an amazing opportunity to experience this unique approach to music-making in response to the natural environment.

With ticket tier options for those on a lower income and also those able to support more (low-income/middle-income/high-income) for each, prices are:

• £20/25/30 for the 2 hour workshop
• £12/14/16 for the evening performance
• Or £30/35/40 for both events

High Income - I have access to a regular and stable income and I have the means and desire to contribute towards making the performance affordable for others

Middle Income - I have access to a regular and disposable income, and I can comfortably afford the recommended ticket price

Low Income - I have low income or I would select a concession rate for an event due to my personal circumstances

We aim to make this event as accessible as we can. If you would like to attend the gig but can't afford our low income rate, please get in touch and we will try to accommodate you.

We'll be in the upstairs dance studio space at Open Source Arts - a fabulous multi-purpose space in a homely open urban warehouse setting at Aire Place Mills.

Address: Open Source Arts, Unit 1a Aire Place Mills, 143 Kirkstall Road, LS3 1JL

If you have any questions about anything, please do not hesitate to get in touch by sending an email to [email protected]

Host or Publisher Emma Coleman