Making Sense of Rhythm TBA 2021

Experiencing, understanding and applying the power of rhythm in our lives!

 

Rhythm is ubiquitous. We feel it in our heartbeat, navigate it through the days, weeks, months, seasons and years. We perceive it in our speech, experience it our gait and observe it in the phases of the moon. Rhythm is one of the most important elements in music. It provides pace, structure, creates alignments, dissonances, mismatches, and conjures up expectancies and surprises. This is one of the reasons why music affects and touches us so deeply.

 

However, music alone cannot help us understand the innate power of rhythm. In order to comprehend rhythm, we need to embody it; sense it through action; investigate it through movement and appreciate it through sensing and feeling. We need to probe rhythm's multiple energies and explore its organizing potential within and all around us. In doing so, we will be in a position to build a bridge between rhythmic phenomena and basic human sensory and emotional experience. There is renewed energy in this expereince and conscious application.

 

This workshop aims at reconnecting rhythm to sensitivity with a view towards a better awareness of our inner rhythm's (how we feel them, how we value them, and how we implement them), towards better communication skills by harnessing our own rhythm's and syncing in with other people’s pace and timing, and towards a more fulfilling consciousness of the scope of our rhythmic part in the symphony of daily and universal Life.

 

TBA 2020 Spring/Summer dates

Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico

Limited to 20 participants. 

 

Cost: $425.00 includes workshop, materials, and lunches for all participants on or off IHM campus.

 

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Lodging is separate please contact the Open Ear Center for information at openearcenter@nwlink.com or inquire here: 

 

 

 

About Arnould Massart

 

This musician, teacher, and versatile researcher is not easy to portray, for while being active on scenes as diverse as jazz, contemporary music, chanson, and pop, he has been centering his interest on the power of sound and rhythm for more than 30 years.

 

Born in Belgium in 1956, Arnould Massart is classically trained in music and self-taught in jazz. After graduating in Germanic Philology from the University of Brussels, he studied music composition and analysis at Morley College and Goldsmith College in London as well as at the Conservatory of Mons. He then went on to study and research the therapeutic aspects of music with Don Campbell and Pat Moffitt Cook in the USA and with Vemu Mukunda in India.

 

In the jazz and improvisation field, he released three albums as a band leader (Harmonie du soir, Three to Get Ready & À l’improviste) featuring his own material in various settings. In 1985, he was awarded the Sabam Prize for his big band piece “Lifestrings”, and, three years later, won the International C.R.P.L.F Jazz Contest for his performance of “Laurentide Waltz”. In the pop and chanson area, Arnould Massart is a renowned composer/arranger and pianist: as Maurane’s musical director these past 25 years, for whom he has written some unforgettable songs but also with the likes of Ozark Henry, Khaled, Vaya Con Dios and many others.

 

Rapidly though, his musical career has combined with educational activities. In 1988, he was appointed teacher in Jazz Harmony at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. At the same time, he started developing a new approach in the teaching of rhythm aiming at “reinstating rhythm practice into a significant relationship with the human experience of the body”. Since then, he has been hired to train music teachers at various levels locally and internationally. Today, his rhythmic approach is part of the curriculum in the Music Schools in French-speaking Belgium.

 

Arnould Massart is the author of numerous articles on rhythm and rhythm teaching available at: www.rythme.be. His book Practicing Jazz Harmony was published in Paris in 2013. Massart is working on a new book due in early 2020.