This workshop is now fully booked. Sometimes places become available - you can put your name on the waiting list here.
Collaborative Vocal Improvisation - the art of making spontaneously co-composed vocal music with others - is rising in popularity in the UK and around the world - because it feels brilliant. And terrifying. And liberating. And a wonderful new frontier for adventurous singers.
Here is a Guardian Article about this work, and a short video about Briony’s teaching.
Studying CVI with Briony encompasses:
Co-creating music in the moment with others in deeply nourishing, surprising and delightful ways
Connecting with others through the authentic and beautiful medium of voice and singing
Accessing your infinite wellspring of creativity, waking it up and making good use of it
Softening the body and brining out the natural health and fullness of your unique voice
Soloing! If you want.
Improvising with lyrics: yes you can.
Using voice to express ourselves, to heal, to sooth ourselves and others, to Make Life Feel Nicer. To lift us up.
Intermediate workshops with Briony are for anyone who can sing in tune, keep a beat, and wants an adventure.
About Briony Greenhill
Briony is “one of the world’s leading proponents of collaborative vocal improvisation (CVI)” - Laura Barton, The Guardian. She has been teaching CVI internationally for a decade, and students call her a “master” whose work is “life changing”.
Briony’s recent album was featured on Woman’s Hour, The Guardian, Radio 3 and Mojo, and all songs were sourced in improvisation. She has performed live with some of the world’s leading vocal improvisers.
She’s a founder member of The Well, the new International Vocal Improvisation Guild; co-founder of the UK’s first Vocal Improvisation Festival, and maker of what is perhaps the world’s first Vocal Improvisation app, Your Song. She has released the world’s first entirely improvised 5 and 6 voice albums.
Briony teaches vocal musicianship - chops for singers - from beginner to advanced levels. As a qualified SomaSource Leader, Briony is experienced in supportively holding the inner themes that can emerge through work with vocal improvisation: grief; personal and collective trauma, a wide range of emotions, a multitude of parts. She draws from somatic trauma healing, IFS, and Soul work to compassionately support students as they face what stands in the way of their access to their free, natural, unique, magnificent voice that is our birthright, and an open pipe to the songs of now. It can be transformational.
Vocal Improvisation can be applied to community singing, therapy and healing; ritual and ceremony; recording and performing arts; collaboration with other singers, instrumentalists and inter-disciplinary artists; composing and songwriting, and music education.
Students have said:
“Thank you for a revelatory and transformational weekend Briony! Much has moved in me. 🙏🏻” Mark
“I mostly wanted to express my deep gratitude for what you do and what you have opened in my life. CVI has literally changed my life. You have changed my life. The structures, the skills, the tools I learned in circles with you have opened up my musical and my daily life. I have been able to finally experience and be part of nourishing, exciting musical collaborations! My song writing, my teaching, my performing is transformed by my willingness to stand in the void and let music move through me.” - Emily
“I’m discovering a reservoir of power actually, which I suspected was there but I hadn’t actually felt or experienced coming through in the way that it is, both in my voice and in my day to day. It’s very much like something has been stirred and invigorated and given some channel to start moving in the world, and this is really really really exciting, and really beautiful. I’m just absolutely delighted by it.” - Tom Hirons
“I’ve loved every minute of working with you and I think all instrumental students should do this. In fact I wish every person could experience this way of being. I have taught music at the conservatory level and at the early childhood level; at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Levine School of Music, The Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning through the Arts, etc. I trained in Juilliard, New York in Dalcroze Eurhyrhmics, a Swiss body-based approach to teaching and developing musicianship, which is extremely powerful work.
But what you bring specifically to the voice is something quite unique. To me it’s body-based, soul-based, healing-based, and community / collective-oriented. Your vocal work has a spiritual dimension that Dalcroze Eurhyrhmics only hints at. It’s very beautiful. I’m quite certain that the need and the desire for what you offer is immense.”
— Marcia Daft, Music Education Specialist
“And then after our course was done the peer group continued…and this has been such an incredible blessing in my life. I can’t even say how much it has meant to me over the last year and a half. Those beautiful people and voices are in my heart (and I hope my life) forever.” - Anon
“The benefits of the course are rippling out in my life in subtle and crystal clear ways. I feel more confident in all areas of my life.” - Lucy
“If everyone in the world did this, there would be no problems. I’m just so high from it! I don’t know of anything, any therapy, that makes me feel this way.” - Isabel
“It’s amazing what’s there. It’s amazing what’s there when I start listening instead of leading.” - Anon.
“How rich to have witnessed all these people sharing their voices and words and movements, it really was spectacular. I'm so so glad I came, I trusted you and was right to trust you.” - Anon
“It truly is a temple, bringing up such deep stuff.” - Isabel
“It’s all leadership and listening I reckon, and that’s what you teach. Finding our voice, facing out fears, following our hearts, listening deep within, expressing our love, it’s all what you do 🙂” - Dave
“Thank you so much for such a brilliant course and for holding space so beautifully and so generously. It really has been an eye-opener for me in terms of how powerful the voice can be for healing.” - Bex
“I feel so much more free vocally and like I’m accessing music from a new perspective. You’re a wonderful, nurturing teacher and have so much wisdom that ripples out far beyond the vocal realm.” - Pearl
“I am the youngest of 4 and always held back. Until I finally realised it wasn't my shadow I was standing in and suddenly really enjoyed performing! Briony Greenhill helped so much.” - Jane
“Suppressing non-verbal emotional expression increases autonomic arousal, leading to a higher likelihood of being diagnosed with cancer, high blood pressure, ulcers and other major and minor health problems (Pennebaker and Chew, 1985)” - from Conor O’Brien’s Masters Dissertation about CVI in the context of Music Therapy.
“I just want to say thank you for bringing me to a place where I can work to uncover bits of myself that I’m longing for, and that’s what the work does. Last night was so utterly, utterly unique and sort of, sacred for me, because to build those connections and have that closeness to people who I hardly know, to be honest, is - it makes it worth being alive. Your own, amazing solo was an unexpected gift.” - Anonymous
”Briony, I thank you for all the roads you have taken in life that have brought you to where, and how and who you are.❤️ The breadth and depth of what you teach is so vast and yet the experience is so supremely intimate, such a sweet and desired juxtaposition. My soul is showering you with gratitude for opening up this world to me!🙏🏼 “ - Elaine