Briony Greenhill is “one of the world’s leading proponents of collaborative vocal improvisation (CVI)” - The Guardian.
CVI is the art of co-creating vocal music in the moment. Here is a short film about Briony’s teaching, which has evolved from the lineage of Rhiannon, Bobby McFerrin, Joey Blake and others. 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 took improvisations and reproduced them adding instrumentation in the studio. Crossing the Ocean featured in The Guardian, Mojo, Radio 3, Woman’s Hour and more.
Briony teaches vocal musicianship from beginner to advanced levels, while also honouring 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.” You can read more about Briony’s teaching values, Vocal Musicianship Trainings, and a history of vocal improvisation in the American tradition here.
Study with Briony
Weekend, week-long and year-long courses in the UK
2024 Autumn / Winter
October 8th 2024 - 13th July 2025 - Wild Voice, Solid Roots Year-Long
November 14th 2024 - 13th June 2025 - Singing The Unseen Year-Long
November 30-December 1st - Beginner / Intermediate Intro Weekend, Devon
January in California
January 11-12 - CVI Weekend for Experienced Students - San Geronimo Valley, California
January 15th - Concert at the Monkey House, Berkeley Ca
January 18-19 - An Introduction to Collaborative Vocal Improvisation - San Geronimo Valley, California
January 25-6 - Healing Forms for Experienced Students - San Geronimo Valley, California
2025 Spring / Summer
March 8 - May 11 - Vocal Transformation 3 non-residential weekends, Devon
March 22-3 - An Intermediate-Advanced Intro to CVI, Devon
May 31-June 1 - Vocal Improvisation for Men - Devon
2025 Autumn / Winter
September 23-8 - Healing Forms & Nature Connection @ Bala Brook Retreat Center, Devon
October 1-3 - An Intermediate - Advanced Introduction to Collaborative Vocal Improvisation (CVI) @ MIC, Devon
October 14-17 - Rhythm Level 2 @ MIC, Devon
October 21-24 - Taboo, Paradigm Shift and Collaborative Vocal Improvisation @ MIC, Devon
November 5-7 - A Beginner - Intermediate Introduction to Collaborative Vocal Improvisation (CVI) @ MIC, Devon
November 25-28 - Melody Level 2 @ MIC, Devon
December 5 - 7 - Sound and Silence @ Bala Brook Retreat Center, Devon
“Working with Briony has been such a gift for me. Her expertise in the field of voice work is inspirational and I have felt so supported by her generosity, strength and tenderness. As someone who also works with the voice, I have felt so ignited by her guidance and knowledge. I took part in her Vocal Improvisation Retreat and it gave me so much for my own creative path. I feel so blessed to have worked with Briony and consider her to be a fantastic leader in this field. I will continue to work with Briony as it nourishes my creative path as a musician and as a vocal facilitator.”
— Nessi Gomes, Artist, Teacher, Healer
“I’m discovering a reservoir of power through this work, one which I suspected was there but I hadn’t actually felt or experienced coming through in the way that it is, both in my 'sung' voice and in my day to day vocal expression. 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, Writer and Storyteller
“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. 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’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
“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. ”
— Anonymous
“Briony's approach to CVI is a kind of revolution. She presents this vibrant, creative and compelling art with a masterful sensitivity to the needs of her students and their unique singing journeys. With her deep knowledge and practice of earth-based spirituality, CVI becomes more than a singing practice and, rather, a modality for healing and inner transformation.
Being estranged from our own voice is perhaps symbolic of this modern age of isolation, where our connection to singing is often blocked through fear, shame and the tyranny of the inner critic. Such a state of affairs seems to stand in stark contrast to our ancestors' and indigenous peoples' joyful, devotional or celebratory use of the voice for spiritual, relational and/or healing purposes.
For the sake of us moderns and our wellbeing crisis, I believe these lost cultures of communal expression need reviving. In this way, Briony's CVI appears not just to be a potent medicine for an individual, but also a tool for cultural renewal.”
Xander, Artist, Community Leader
Vocal Transformation Autumn 2024
This is a 6-day course spread over three weekends, shaped to profoundly shift your relationship with your voice from challenge to freedom, from judgement to love, from anxiety to pleasure.
September 7 - 8 @ Ashprington Village Hall, Devon TQ9 7UL
October 19 - 20 @ Ashprington Village Hall
November 23 - 24 @ Scoriton Village Hall, Devon TQ11 0JB
“It was deeper than an ayahuasca ceremony, I grew more than in workshops with leading psychologists, and it’s the safest I’ve ever felt in a group.”
We’ll integrate Collaborative Vocal Improvisation (CVI) with Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS) to work with the parts of us that struggle to be heard, that constrict the voice, experience performance anxiety, are beset by inner criticism and inhibition. Beneath all of that, I believe you are a living instrument designed - and able - to sing.
This is a mixed level group for people who can sing in tune, keep a beat, and want an adventure (these are in my view pre-requisites for studying vocal improvisation).
Whatever the voice is buried under, we’re going to work together to lift it off, bring the voices out, and set them free. We’ll use these voices to improvise, express ourselves, connect to others, self-sooth, and heal.
There will be spiritual aspects to this course, in the context of an Earth-Based spirituality that welcomes every kind of spiritual diversity including atheism.
We will gradually become able to co-create vocal music with others in real time, and come home to our natural capacity to sing, part of our human design, our birth right. We’ll take the broken wings and learn to fly, midwife the voices, and gradually, enjoy their soaring.
Led by Briony, with assistance from IFS Therapist Sarah Burns.
“We know each other on a level that a conversation wouldn’t have given us. It creates bonds and connections that you can’t otherwise create. you’re in deep communication with people in a way that’s quite rare.”
Welcoming out parts of us that might prefer the safety of hiding, and giving them a chance to express and relate through vocal improvisation.
The voice is a profound ally for welcoming all of ourselves home, as it brings our inner material into awareness, gives it an avenue of expression, and soothes us, all at the same time.
In IFS terms, vocal improvisation seems to go beneath protector parts and reach either exiled parts - parts needing to be welcomed home into integration - or what is called “Self” - the aspect of us that is always present, compassionate and curious. How most of us like to be, and how we mostly want people to be with us.
“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. I’ve befriended some of my wisest parts. I feel empowered and shame free.”
So, welcome to the healing ground. Diving into the transformational art form of vocal improvisation with a shared group intention to use this for our healing and growth, and let our living instruments fly, heal, whole, ground, and flourish.
“I have suffered with depression and all sorts of stuff for always. And I genuinely think now that I have released something monumental. I feel as if this black mass that I’ve carried all my life has lifted. I’m just a new, different person. It’s really extraordinary, really really really.”
Practicalities
The workshop is non-residential
We meet 10-5 each day
Each day we do 1-2 hours of IFS therapy after lunch.
Hot drinks will be provided; please bring a packed lunch and any snacks you may need.
On the Sundays we do floor work; please bring a yoga mat and blanket, or something to lie on and something to lie under. If you are travelling in from afar by train, often local people can bring extra for you.
We suggest avoiding alcohol the nights before we gather as it can interfere negatively with your experience.
Please don’t come if you are contagiously ill. It’s possible to swap your place for another course in this instance.
I normally teach Vocal Transformation with assistance from one or two IFS therapists. (If you are an IFS therapist and would like to assist, please email info@brionygreenhill.com.)
This course if suitable for you if:
You haven’t worked with me much or at all before
You want to sing freely but face constraints
You have fairly stable mental health currently.
This course is not suitable for you if:
You are currently in a mental health crisis - other forms of support are likely to be more supportive
You are an experienced CVI student. If you still face these constrictions after extended study with me, arrange a call with me by email.
Cost
£625
Singing The Unseen
Briony Greenhill invites you to her year-long study of Collaborative Vocal Improvisation course applied to ritual, well-being, nature connection, and the sacred.
Vocal Transformation Spring 2025
March 8-9, April 5-6, May 10-11 @ Moor Imagination Collective, Buckfastleigh, Devon TQ11 0AB
This is a 6-day course spread over three weekends, shaped to profoundly shift your relationship with your voice from challenge to freedom, from judgement to love, from anxiety to pleasure.
“It was deeper than an ayahuasca ceremony, I grew more than in workshops with leading psychologists, and it’s the safest I’ve ever felt in a group.”
We’ll integrate Collaborative Vocal Improvisation (CVI) with Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS) to work with the parts of us that struggle to be heard, that constrict the voice, experience performance anxiety, are beset by inner criticism and inhibition. Beneath all of that, I believe you are a living instrument designed - and able - to sing.
This is a mixed level group for people who can sing in tune, keep a beat, and want an adventure (these are in my view pre-requisites for studying vocal improvisation).
Whatever the voice is buried under, we’re going to work together to lift it off, bring the voices out, and set them free. We’ll use these voices to improvise, express ourselves, connect to others, self-sooth, and heal.
There will be spiritual aspects to this course, in the context of an Earth-Based spirituality that welcomes every kind of spiritual diversity including atheism.
We will gradually become able to co-create vocal music with others in real time, and come home to our natural capacity to sing, part of our human design, our birth right. We’ll take the broken wings and learn to fly, midwife the voices, and gradually, enjoy their soaring.
“We know each other on a level that a conversation wouldn’t have given us. It creates bonds and connections that you can’t otherwise create. you’re in deep communication with people in a way that’s quite rare.”
Welcoming out parts of us that might prefer the safety of hiding, and giving them a chance to express and relate through vocal improvisation.
The voice is a profound ally for welcoming all of ourselves home, as it brings our inner material into awareness, gives it an avenue of expression, and soothes us, all at the same time.
In IFS terms, vocal improvisation seems to go beneath protector parts and reach either exiled parts - parts needing to be welcomed home into integration - or what is called “Self” - the aspect of us that is always present, compassionate and curious. How most of us like to be, and how we mostly want people to be with us.
“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. I’ve befriended some of my wisest parts. I feel empowered and shame free.”
So, welcome to the healing ground. Diving into the transformational art form of vocal improvisation with a shared group intention to use this for our healing and growth, and let our living instruments fly, heal, whole, ground, and flourish.
Accommodation
If you need a place to stay, there 2 initial accommodation options.
The Christian Community - £40pp pn. They’re right across the road from MIC and have 4 very comfortable clean bedrooms and a small self catering kitchen (and a chapel, and a workshop space).
Local air bnb - £50 pp pn, £65 for private en suite room. A lovely shared house with 4 bedrooms / 6 beds, 1 mile away. It’s a 5 min drive or a 30 min country walk.
To book accommodation please email Dan info@brionygreenhill.com. The sooner the better, as we can’t realistically book the local air bnb until a few people want to stay there.
MIC has a cafe that does lovely healthy tasty affordable food on Saturdays. There are local shops and cafes.
“I have suffered with depression and all sorts of stuff for always. And I genuinely think now that I have released something monumental. I feel as if this black mass that I’ve carried all my life has lifted. I’m just a new, different person. It’s really extraordinary, really really really.”
Practicalities
The workshop is non-residential
We meet 10-5 each day
Each day we do 1-2 hours of IFS therapy after lunch, mostly through singing.
Hot drinks will be provided; please bring a packed lunch and any snacks you may need.
On the Sundays we do floor work; please bring a yoga mat and blanket, or something to lie on and something to lie under. If you are travelling in from afar by train, often local people can bring extra for you.
We suggest avoiding alcohol the nights before we gather as it can interfere negatively with your experience.
Please don’t come if you are contagiously ill. It’s possible to swap your place for another course in this instance.
I teach Vocal Transformation with assistance from one or two IFS therapists. (If you are an IFS therapist and would like to assist, please email info@brionygreenhill.com.)
This course if suitable for you if:
You haven’t worked with me much or at all before
You want to sing freely but face constraints
You have fairly stable mental health currently.
This course is not suitable for you if:
You are currently in a mental health crisis - other forms of support are likely to be more supportive
You are an experienced CVI student. If you still face these constrictions after extended study with me, arrange a call with me by email.
Questions? Email info@brionygreenhill.com
Fees
Vocal Transformation costs £625 for the 3 weekends earlybird; £795 later bird.
2 Assistant places are available at half price. If you’d like to be considered as an assistant, please email info@brionygreenhill.com
An Intermediate-Advanced Intro to CVI - Spring 2025
For experienced singers who can sing in tune, keep a beat, and want an adventure. We’ll deeply cultivate the unique magnificence of our voice, develop our chops, deepen our listening, and grow into the ability to co-create delicious music spontaneously with others.
An Intermediate-Advanced Intro to CVI - Autumn 2025
For experienced singers who can sing in tune, keep a beat, and want an adventure. We’ll deeply cultivate the unique magnificence of our voice, develop our chops, deepen our listening, and grow into the ability to co-create delicious music spontaneously with others.
An Intermediate-Advanced Intro to CVI
Collaborative Vocal Improvisation (CVI) - 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 next level for keen singers.
Here is a Guardian Article about this work, and a short video about Briony’s teaching.
Studying CVI with Briony encompasses:
Using and developing our chops - our skilled creative use of our abilities with rhythm, harmony and melody
Deeply cultivating the unique magnificence of the voice using the Resonant Body method
Growing into the ability to improvise live in front of an audience from a place of relaxation and presence
Deepening our listening
Support for the deep inner work that the art form asks of us
Personal growth and transformation
Refreshing the spiritual connection with music - returning to the source, sourcing from the void
Making really good music, delightfully and surprisingly so - out of thin air in the moment, alone and with others
Emergent co-creation - potentially entering a higher state of surrender where we are sung
Finding your unique authentic expression and style
Intermediate - advanced workshops with Briony are for experienced singers, performing / recording artists, choir leaders, singer-songwriters, music graduates / teachers / keen students who can sing in tune, keep a beat, and are ready to jump in.
Practicalities
Timing: 10am - 5pm Saturday, 10-4.30pm Sunday. Please arrive 15 mins early for a prompt start. We may end up to 10 mins over time.
Hot drinks will be provided
Please bring a packed lunch and any snacks you may want
On the Sunday please bring a yoga mat and blanket for floor work. If you are coming from afar by train, probably local people can bring extra.
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 founding member of The Well, the new Global 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 four entirely improvised albums, including what we believe are the world’s first entirely improvised 5 and 6 voice albums (Listen and Remembering).
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. (Having said that, in an intermediate-advanced intro weekend there is not a whole lot of space to go into these things - not as much as on a week-long, year long, or Vocal Transformation course.)
Vocal Improvisation can be applied to community singing, therapy and healing; ritual and ceremony; recording and performing; collaboration with other singers, instrumentalists and inter-disciplinary artists; composing and songwriting, arranging and producing, and music education.
Students have said:
“Working with Briony has been such a gift for me. Her expertise in the field of voice work is inspirational and I have felt so supported by her generosity, strength and tenderness. As someone who also works with the voice, I have felt so ignited by her guidance and knowledge. I took part in her Vocal Improvisation Retreat and it gave me so much for my own creative path. I feel so blessed to have worked with Briony and consider her to be a fantastic leader in this field. I will continue to work with Briony as it nourishes my creative path as a musician and as a vocal facilitator.”
— Nessi Gomes, Artist, Teacher
“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
“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. 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, choir leader and singer songwriter
“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, vocal improvisation teacher
“Thank you for a revelatory and transformational weekend Briony! Much has moved in me. 🙏🏻” Mark
“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 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
“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, writer and storyteller
“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
Please direct questions to info@brionygreenhill.com.
Assistant Places
Two assistant places are available at half price. The assistant arrives an hour before and leaves 30-60 mins after on each day and helps with set up, pack down, tea and kitchen overview and facilitating the group to clean up after lunch. The assistant doesn’t have an assistant role during the singing sessions and is 100% participant in those times. If you'd like to be the assistant, please email info@brionygreenhill.com.
Students have said:
“It was deeper than an ayahuasca ceremony, I grew more than in workshops with leading psychologists, and it’s the safest I’ve ever felt in a group.” - Robin
“One of the most powerful experiences of my life! I feel changed on a cellular level!” (ok it was a 4 day retreat not a weekend…)
“Briony really made us all feel at home – starting off with exercises that didn’t force me outside of my comfort zone, and a no judgement pact, really allowed me to feel comfortable with the group, which then gave me the confidence to try out some solos.”
“It was seriously fun, crazy, inspiring, opening and meditative, all at the same time.”
“Some singing teachers teach you sing with your voice. Briony teaches you to sing with your heart and sing from your soul.”
“You made it feel like a womb. Protected, loved, nourished, warm and holding.”