MUSIC EMBODIED!
A creative music course with a difference
KRYSIA OSOSTOWICZ (violin/viola) MARIE BITLLOCH (cello)
JONATHAN YOUNG (Feldenkrais) DOMINIQUE ROYLE (Physiotherapy) JILL GREENACRE (Yoga, Shiatsu)
at LAVETHAN, CORNWALL
String players and chamber groups including pianists are invited to Cornwall for six days of music-making at Lavethan, an ancient manor house in a secluded river valley surrounded by huge trees. We can accommodate up to 20 students either in pre-formed groups or as individuals. We offer immersion in the greatest music in a beautiful home, with great company, delicious food, and time to explore the fabulous surrounding countryside.
In addition to chamber music coaching and some individual lessons, this course focuses especially on the way we use our bodies to make music. Recognising that the body is our first instrument, we will look at issues of physical comfort – including occupational aches and pains – and also explore the crucial role that body language plays in musical expression.
We welcome a wonderful team of experts from three different but related disciplines: Physiotherapy, Feldenkrais and the ancient Japanese art of Shiatsu massage. There will be therapeutic one-to-one sessions, group workshops and open discussions about the parallels between these various approaches. We will also hold informal concerts in our beautiful Barn.
“This has been one of the most inspiring and “growth” weeks of my life… the inspirational coaching and lessons have renewed my love for our craft. Thank you for everything.”
Accommodation and surroundings
Repertoire, plans and pianos
Accommodation is in the Manor House and adjoining cottages at Lavethan, sharing large bedrooms. There are several spacious living- rooms for relaxation and rehearsals, plus a beautiful concert hall in a converted barn. The grounds contain enormous trees, meadows, formal gardens, a swimming pool, a river running through the fields below, an island and a wilderness area. Performances and meals will take place in the Barn.
Chamber groups will have daily coaching sessions, and individual instrumental lessons are also available, alongside Yoga and Feldenkrais classes, physiotherapy and shiatzu massage. Jonathan Young, our Feldenkrais teacher, is also an actor who runs very popular clowning workshops: prepare for the unexpected!
There are three grand pianos and several rehearsal rooms. For our group workshops, please bring a short piece or part of a piece to play alone – solo Bach or other – to use as a starting- point for exploration. You are also invited to bring a poem, a song, or a paragraph of a favourite book or play.
Schedule
We meet at Lavethan on Saturday 31st August between 2-4pm, in time for tea, music, a group workshop and supper. We will schedule coaching and other classes for the following five days, allowing for individual requests and also leaving time for practice, walks and chamber music reading. Towards the end of the week we will have a couple of informal concerts in the Barn. Departure will be after lunch on Friday 6th September.
Travel
Although Lavethan feels remote, the journey is straightforward. The nearest train station is Bodmin Parkway, taking approx 4 hours from London Paddington, Birmingham or Cardiff. We will meet students arriving at Bodmin Parkway on 31st August afternoon, details nearer the time. By car, Blisland lies a few minutes off the A30, fifty miles west of Exeter (approx 5 hours’ drive from London). The postcode is PL30 4QG.
Applications and payment
Please send your application form asap, and by 3rd August, to osostowiczk@gmail.com, enclosing information about yourself and/or your group. If you are accepted, we will request a non-refundable deposit of £120 by 7th August. Each group member should send in a form.
Please email or call if you need any further information: osostowiczk@gmail.com or 07976 755082.
We look forward to hearing from you! Krysia, Marie, Jonathan, Dominique and Jill
Course fees
The course fee of £495 covers tuition, accommodation and meals. However, we want to welcome people regardless of financial circumstances, so some generous bursaries are available in cases of genuine need: please enquire!
Tutors
Violinist Krysia Osostowicz leads the internationally renowned Brodsky Quartet, with whom she has recently played in Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, Holland, Spain, Italy and London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. She also teaches violin and chamber music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and organises courses and concerts at Lavethan, Cornwall. She studied with Yehudi Menuhin and Sandor Vegh, and later with pianists Radu Lupu and Ferenc Rados. Her early career was with Domus, a piano quartet which travelled with its own portable concert hall and made a series of award-winning recordings. She subsequently formed the Dante Quartet, which she led for 25 years, winning the RPS Award for Chamber Music. Krysia’s teaching embraces not only violin playing but harmony, structure, the dynamics of ensemble playing, and not least, how body awareness relates to musical expression.
French-Catalan cellist Marie Bitlloch is a founding member of the Elias String Quartet who perform worldwide. Their groundbreaking Beethoven Project was broadcast by BBC Radio 3 and recorded as a six-album cycle live at Wigmore Hall. Current and future highlights include US and Canada tours, concerts at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and a cycle of Mendelssohn’s chamber music at Wigmore Hall. They are Ensemble in Residence at the RNCM, visiting regularly for coaching and concerts. Marie studied in Perpignan, Paris and RNCM, with Michel Lefort, Philippe Muller and Ralph Kirshbaum, and has won prizes at numerous competitions. For five years she was joint artistic director at the Festival & Rencontres de Musique de Chambre du Larzac. Marie is a regular guest with various orchestras and chamber music festivals throughout Europe.
Jonathan Young is a Feldenkrais practitioner,theatre-maker, director, and teacher in higher education. As a Feldenkrais practitioner, he has worked with the public and with theatre students, in groups and individually. He trained with Jacques Lecoq at his international school of theatre and movement in Paris, and subsequently with Sue Morrison in Clown through Mask, a synthesis of Native American and European clowning practices which restores clowns to a mythological and poetic context, making work that is intelligent and transformative. For the past 25 years he has created and toured original theatre works as a maker, director and performer. He has taught theatre, movement and Feldenkrais at various UK drama schools since 2008, including Central, LAMDA and Arthaus Berlin, and since 2020 he has been an Associate Movement Teacher at LAMDA. jyoungcreative.info
Dominique Royle is a physiotherapist who specialises in treating musicians’ injuries, also lecturing and writing many articles and lecturing on this. She is a member of BAPAM and has been treating musicians at the IMS, Prussia Cove, for the last 25 years. She uses a variety of hands-on methods including connective tissue and joint mobilisation techniques, and she has also been influenced by Iyengar Yoga and Feldenkrais amongst other approaches. She focuses on teaching musicians how they can best help themselves and better understand how to avoid and minimise any playing-related injury.
Jill Greenacre, resident in Cornwall, is an actor who has taken part in many theatre and film productions, including Tim Seyfert’s 2022 film “Nowhere”, a debut sensation which has won awards in Monaco, Canada and the UK. As well as being an accomplished horsewoman, Jill is a highly experienced practitioner of Shiatsu, working both with people and with horses. Her therapeutic sessions have been much valued by musicians at “Music Embodied!” in the past two years.