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.

Song Workshop at Ansells Farm, February 2012: “Old & New”

Saturday February 25th: This time the theme is ‘Old & New’, inspired by the turn of the year. Think of past pleasures and future adventures, dawn and dusk, birth and death – all sorts of beginnings and ends find expression in songs. Search out some interesting pieces and bring them along.

Also  A DATE FOR YOUR DIARY! Our 4th annual Ansells Summer Music Weekend will take place from Friday 29th June – Sunday 1st July. More details soon.

As always, contact us at stephen@varcoe.com for information or to apply.

Song workshop at Ansells Farm, July 2011: Wine, Women and Song

July 1-3 2011

The theme was the Joy of Life, and in this extended version of our normal Song Workshops we had more opportunity to explore this repertoire.

Actor Timothy West with Stephen Varcoe and Christina Lawrie after the marvellosly entertaining ' Wine, Women and Song' programme which began the weekend's music-making. Baby Mairi-Anna is Christina's latest and greatest production, and the weekend's youngest participant - 6 weeks old here
Some of the participants in this year's workshop at Ansells

Please email stephen@varcoe.com for details. Find out more about our Song Workshops.