Instructors

Evelyn Fink-Mennel | Austria
Subjects: Violin and voice, yodeling (workshop direction)
With contagious enthusiasm, she fiddles, sings and communicates music from all geographic directions. Her focus is music from the Western and Eastern Alps as well as the less known, rocking violin pieces from Vorarlberg (“Rongger”, “Küahdrecklar”), enriched by experiments with polyphony, sound, and arrangement. Fiddle tunes from Northern Europe and vocal music from overseas and the Georgian Republic round off her repertoire. Whenever possible, issues relating violin play are treated individually. Coaching of established ensembles.

Adriano Adewale | Brazil
Afro-Brazilian percussion, dance
Besides Afro-Brazilian styles and rhythms like ijexá, baiāo and samba, Adriano Adewale teaches traditional instrumental playing techniques (e.g. pandeiro, atabaque). Movement, voice and singing form the central unit of Afro-Brazilian music and are inherent to his small-group sessions and the plenary sessions. The aim of the course: Besides learning the play of various rhythmical instruments, students can experience the complex organization of an Afro-Brazilian percussion ensemble (several percussion instruments will be provided in limited amounts).

Rémi Decker | Belgium
Bagpipe, tin whistle, dance
Rémi Decker’s bagpipe music became known through his composing grandfather—and the richness of musical languages drawing on tradition. Besides essential issues of arrangement—“How to rearrange simple tunes”—the acquisition of melodies is central to this course. Music and dances from Belgium and France, as well as Flemish songs will be presented alongside Celtic, Swedish and African music. In the tin whistle course (open to all flute instruments) Irish tunes and differentiated, traditional playing and sound techniques will be worked out. Instruments: bagpipe in G, tin whistle (or flutes) in D. Instruments are available in limited amounts—please announce demands.

Hans Hassler | Switzerland
Accordion, clarinet, double bass
There might be hardly any style this man from the Churer Mountains cannot master. Grown up with folk music and familiarized with accordion music through his studies with M. Ellegaard, he is also at home in jazz, dixieland, classic, and the avant-garde. He is the doyen of inter-stylistic Helvetian accordion music. In improvisations and avant-garde sound experiments he processes folk music and anything else reaching his ears. The course will cover Swiss folk music and the fun of playing, combined with trips to other musical styles and improvisation.

Norbert Hauer | Austria
Yodeling, “Singing church”, singing
As a musician, gstanzl singer, wedding and funeral yodeler he has songs for every condition of life and each situation up his sleeve. To him, singing is like a game of questions and answers in the most tender sounds and the most boisterous yodeling yelps, like a whiff of a piece of heaven on earth and a musical answer to the questions for meaning in life. Norbert Hauer’s “Singing church” assimilates melodious themes from Western and Eastern liturgy.

Franz Hautzinger | Austria
Trumpet and improvisation
Socialized in contemporary jazz, he has developed a musical language based on improvisation. To the trumpet player Hautzinger, music is an archaic form of expression and language. The immediateness of making and inventing music is an exciting, joyful, social event. Variation, design, manipulation, taking apart and putting back together: by making music with the help of unconventional methods he wants to promote the ability to move freely with and within music.

Father Maximilian | Austria
Gregorian chants
The Gregorian Choral looks back on a century-long tradition in the Göttweig monastery. Especially at Vesper time, the monastery church sounds with these Latin monophonous chants in their wonderful, calmly moving lines and melismas. As the cantor of his community, Father Maximillian is looking forward to plunge into this world together with the workshop participants. This course does not ask for prerequisites, everyone’s welcome. “All we need is the joy and will to share the depths this kind of chanting holds in store for singers and listeners alike.”

Natasa Mirkovic-De Ro | Austria
Singing, voice training
Roma music has played a big role in her life and musical work. This year, Natasa Mirkovic focuses on Roma songs from various Eastern European countries and on music from the “King of Roma Music”, Saban Bajramovic from Serbia. Besides repertoire sessions, her method of “universal voice leading” allows course participants and their instrument of the voice to discover their individual and full potential, independent of styles.

Harri Stojka | Austria
Guitar, gipsy swing
Harri Stojka, the flagship of the Austrian Roma scene, originates from the Lovara-Rom dynasty and intensively dedicates himself to his ancestors’ musical culture. Stoijka successfully plays and teaches swing-orientated music and offers true art on the guitar. His play is full of excitement and joy, intimacy and wantonness. He is a fantastic storyteller on the guitar as well as when talking about the Roma and Sinti musical culture. Stojka offers group and single classes, as well as open ensemble sessions for instrumentalists.

Juan Pablo Villa | Mexico
Voice as instrument, voice expeditions
Juan Pablo’s instrument is his voice. He searches for and explores ways of vocal expression, rendering the kaleidoscope of his musical repertoire breathtaking. In improvisations, his own compositions and traditional songs from his home country of Mexico, he uses his voice as an instrument in the true sense of the word. As a guest instructor he offers vocal expeditions to workshop participants, quite ostinately: with and without loop gadgets.