In this workshop, we will refine our ability to clarify the connection between the physical gestures we make with our body and the musical gestures we envision. We will look at how we sit in a chair to allow for comfortable and efficient movement and will experiment with the support of our shoulder girdle and arms in order to better generate a deep, powerful sound with less effort.
Elisabeth Reed teaches viola da gamba and Baroque cello at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and at the University of California at Berkeley. A soloist and chamber musician with Voices of Music, Archetti, and Wildcat Viols, she has also appeared with the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the Seattle, Portland, Pacific, and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestras, American Bach Soloists, and Pacific Musicworks. She can be heard on the Virgin Classics, Naxos, Focus, and Magnatunes recording labels and has many HD videos on the Voices of Music Youtube channel. Her playing has been described as “intense, graceful, suffused with heat and vigor” and “delicately nuanced and powerful” (Seattle Times). Originally from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, she attended the North Carolina School of the Arts, Oberlin Conservatory, Eastman School of Music, and Indiana University.
In 2000, she graduated from the Semiophysics Feldenkrais training in San Raphael, California, where she studied with Dennis Leri, one of Moshe Feldenkrais’s original students. As a Feldenkrais practitioner, she has worked with musicians from the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Opera, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Jubilate Baroque Orchestra, and the American Bach Soloists, among others. She has also given classes in the Feldenkrais Method at the Juilliard School and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, as well as at the Early Music America Well-Tempered Musician series, the San Francisco Early Music Society workshops, and the National Viola da Gamba Society Conclave.
Elisabeth is one of those rare people who can uncannily read your mind and what you need with a mere glance, and she knows exactly how to get you there (and it's not always what you'd expect!). Her warmth and compassion as a person combined with her holistic approach to movement and music make her the perfect teacher for healthily reaching one’s potential, and her valuable lessons can be continuously applied to every aspect of our lives.
— Eliana Razzino Yang, The Juilliard School
www.elisabethreed.com
www.soundbodies.net