Song Workshop at Ansells Farm, January 2013: The Generation Game – Songs for and about the family, children and childhood

Are we being self-indulgent in focusing our latest workshop on babies, children and family life? We should come clean and admit that impending grandparenthood may have influenced our choice this time, but then why not? There’s a wealth of material in the vocal repertoire which reflects the love of parents for children and vice versa; lullabies, nonsense songs, and fairytales both dark and cheery; Victorian tales of brave orphans and selfless daughters, tender tributes to young mothers, stories about naughty children, pious hymns about good ones. Composers have dedicated music to their own children, and been inspired by them, as well as writing with other peoples’ in mind.

We invite you to explore these possibilities, and perhaps to come up with some more unusual slants on the theme (you don’t have to restrict yourself to human families, for instance) – family life can be very comical (or tragic) too…

Contact us at stephen@varcoe.com for more details of this day, or to be added to the mailing list for future workshops.