Singing feeds the soul!

As part of our commitment to families in the wider community we held a free family a cappella singing workshop at Commonweal School on Saturday June 16 th. The workshop was supported by Swindon Family Learning and Artsmad and was a wonderful opportunity for families to book out some quality time together. Generations can share skills and have fun. Singing is a great way to improve physical and spiritual wellbeing as I believe music feeds
the soul.

The workshop was aimed at KS2 and KS3 students and family and we had five families in attendance. The workshop was led by Liz Terry who trained as a Community Music Tutor after an inspiring two year musical trip around the world. She is a singer who teaches harmony songs from many different countries and in a variety of styles. Liz works with the belief that everyone can sing, working as a freelance practitioner on many Arts in Education Projects. She is presently coordinating a performance based project in eight Gloucestershire primary schools for the Cheltenham Music Festival. Liz runs a singing group called Sing Your Heart Out and has twelve years teaching experience. She has performed with a cappella singing groups, Naked Voices, and various bands throughout her career. Everything is taught by ear in an informal and relaxed way.

A cappella music is vocal music or singing without instrumentalaccompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. A cappella is Italian for "in the style of the chapel", and was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissancepolyphony and Baroqueconcertato style. In the 19th century a renewed interest in Renaissance polyphony coupled with an ignorance of the fact that vocal parts were often doubled by instrumentalists lead to the corruption of the term to mean unaccompanied vocal music. [1]