4 Residential weeks in South Devon at Sharpham House, and Bala Brook

8-13 October 2024, 3-8 December 2024, 14-19 March 2025, July 8-13 2025

Wild Voice Solid Roots is a year-long immersion into the art of Collaborative Vocal Improvisation (CVI)

With an emphasis on vocal musicianship and excellence, taught by Briony Greenhill. It’s designed to help you be a really good vocal improviser - with a free voice you really enjoy creatively, rooted in a confident musicianship that helps you navigate what you hear and imagine with a grounded competence. These are skills that you can translate to choir leadership, songwriting, arranging, composing, and music teaching; as well as CVI practice and, potentially, leadership.

The 2024-5 course is for Levels 2 and 3 - an intermediate level course.

Course Structure

We spend 20 days together over 4 residential weeks (5 day stretches) at beautiful retreat centres in South Devon, UK.

Personal practice at home: at least 5h per week is suggested for the duration of the course. More is great; if you can’t make at least 2.5h per week of personal practice time, this may not be the time for you to do this.

App Support: participants get free access to Briony’s YourSong app for the duration of the course

Buddy Support: Everyone who wants to has a support buddy through the course. Pairs change a few times.

Monthly calls: Group Zoom calls to talk with Briony about how it’s going and get support. Vocal Improv Satsang.

Teaching is split into 4 areas: Rhythm, Harmony, Melody, and Creativity & Integration.

The “chops” - the applied music theory, is taught with a somatic, embodied pedagogy, through the voice, ear and body. We practice and integrate by applying the theory to CVI exercises for optimal absorption of the marvellous mechanics of music into your available vocal musicianship.

Throughout, space is made for support for the inner life themes that usually arise working with vocal improvisation. The whole time we are singing, apart from daily check in time after lunch.

We work to help you bring out your true, authentic voice; free from the burden of inner constraints; available for your musical life. 

Vocal Improvisation is ultimately, for Briony, a spiritual practice. This is explored more deeply in Singing the Unseen, but it is not absent from Wild Voice Solid Roots. Briony’s spirituality is Earth-Based and the course space is inclusive and pluralistic: you be you.

We have plenty of space and time to “drop the chops” and sing freely together, drinking from the wellspring that CVI can offer.

About Briony

Wild Voice, Solid Roots (WVSR) is taught by Briony Greenhill, “one of the world’s leading proponents of Collaborative Vocal Improvisation (CVI)” - The Guardian. WVSR has been running each year since 2018 (online during the pandemic).

Here is a short film about Briony’s teaching, filmed during WVSR 2018:

CVI is the art of co-creating vocal music in the moment. Briony’s teaching has evolved from the lineage of Rhiannon, Bobby McFerrin, Joey Blake and others; is shaped by her long collaboration with The Elements, and by her many years of teaching. Briony is a founding member of The Well Global Vocal Improvisation Network and the UK Vocal Improvisation Festival. 

Briony has released 4 entirely improvised albums. Her debut studio album Crossing the Ocean reproduced improvisations, adding instrumentation. It was featured in The Guardian, Mojo, Radio 3, and Woman’s Hour. Her artistic life as an improviser, composer, performer, arranger and producer continues, with support from Arts Council England, PRS Women Make Music, and others.

Briony teaches Vocal Musicianship from beginner to advanced levels; music graduates who take WVSR say the teaching surpasses what they received at University. Briony honours the spiritual, ritual and therapeutic application of CVI.  She is a qualified SomaSource Leader; a “psycho-spiritual educator, artist, activist and healer who has an integrated understanding of how to creatively work in developmentally attuned ways with diverse people throughout life’s cycles.”   Briony has been teaching vocal improvisation internationally since 2013; is a ritual singer, and was a piano teacher for 5 years.

Teaching is trauma informed and we create containers for support with the inner life. Meanwhile, Briony is not a therapist; the course does not provide 1:1 therapy, and if a lot comes up - which it often does in this work - it may be necessary to seek additional therapeutic support.

To participate, you need:

To be able to sing in tune, keep a beat, and want an adventure. To make available time and space for practice; at least 2-4 hours per week is recommended. With more time, you will go futher. To be in moderate to good mental health. To be able to meet the course attendance and financial requirements.

Cost

£3500 - £4500 (depending on your choice of accommodation)

2 Assistant places are available at £2000 for people who have worked with Briony before - now full.

2 Bursary places are available at £2500: these are reserved for people of colour, non-binary / LGBTQ folks, and low-income regenerative world makers - 1 place left.

We have some accommodation options for our time at Sharpham. If you would like a Heritage Room, the total course fee rises to £4500. For a Premium Room, the cost is £4000. For a Standard Room, the total course cost can be £3500.

The Course fee includes

• Lodging at Sharpham house and Bala Brook

• Really Great food

• All teaching

• App membership for the duration

• Monthly Zoom support calls

• Hopefully, morning yoga and dancing during our residential time together

To Apply

Please complete the application form below, and

Please send us 2 recordings of 1 minute each: 1 minute of you improvising alone, and 1 minute of you singing a song you know well. Both unaccompanied, the voice memos app on your phone is fine. Please send to info@brionygreenhill.com; email us if you have any technical difficulties with this.

Questions? Email info@brionygreenhill.com