Author: erik@erikpostmdt.com

Vocal Freedom/Improvisation

This workshop focuses on the voice and the unknown regions of the voice; the expansion of the boundaries of vocal possibilities. Through the exploration of extended vocal techniques, improvisational ideas and games based on rhythm, timing, physicality, counterpoint, personal expression and emotion, we will hopefully begin to discover a broader definition of musicality that can expand ones personal musical vocabulary and freedom of expression. 

The workshop will begin with a highly physical and vocal warm-up and move into various exercises focusing on freeing one’s thinking and judgemental mind to discover the expressive and personal voice. Elements of intention, texture, emotion, images, timing, color, timbre, dynamics, and physicality of sound will be employed. We will work on the solo voice towards ensemble work, and in the end, create, through improvisation new vocal works. 

The Singing Body/The Moving Voice

The voice has a body, and the body has a voice. They both involve freedom in movement and breathe, release and responsiveness in muscles and bones and spirit. They both require a freedom from tension and strain in order to find a personal sense of expression and creativity. 

In this workshop we will begin to explore the connection between the body and the voice, through breathing, sounding, relaxation exercises, on the floor, and through the space. We will use vocal exercises, movement exercises, and improvisations to find an individual and group sense of freedom of expression. We will vocalise, growl, grunt, sigh, explore the vast palette of vocal utterances, and yes, at times we may even sing, not with the express thought of performance of a particular style or technique, but to find the pleasure of joyful sound and movement. 

This workshop requires a willingness to explore, to question, to experience, to perhaps accept and overcome the fear of using the voice, of moving freely with the voice, in order to attain some understanding of the kinetic connectivity between the two artistic disciplines. The workshop is open to all dancers, singers, musicians, of all levels. No experience necessary, only an open mind and heart to oneself and to others also willing to explore. 

Balkan Song Workshop/Global Song

Jodi Gilbert  came into contact with the traditional musics of her eastern european grandparents as a teenager, and since that time has been influenced by this music as a singer, and an improviser.  She has taught many workshops in Balkan song in USA, and Europe.

Balkan song is an incredibly rich and varied oral tradition that has been passed down through countless generations. In balkan countries singing accompanied every aspect of life; work and play, happiness and sadness. Those familiar with its sound know that it embodies great emotional intensity, and resonates with people the world over.

In this workshop we will learn and sing some of the beautiful folk songs sung at gatherings  of everyday people in communities around the Balkans.  We will explore the harmonies, melodies, rhythms of Bulgaria, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, oa.  Through these soulful songs (most sung in 2 and 3 part harmony), we’ll explore techniques to open participants’ voices to discover a natural Balkan folkloric timbre.

It is not necessary to read music, it is helpful, but much of the music will be taught by “ear” with just lyric sheets,  sometimes music notation will be used.  Singers of all ages, genders, and levels of experience are welcome! The only prerequisite is the ability to accurately match pitch and solidly hold one’s part when singing in harmony with others.

vocalist/improviser/teacher of performance skills

PROJECTS:

The Voice Is the Matter

Original group:

Jodi Gilbert (v,dulcimer)

Michael Moore (alt sax/clarinets)

Ernst Glerum (bass)

Alexei Levin (piano/accordion)

2019- 2021version:

The Voice is the Matter

Jodi Gilbert-voice, dulcimer

Michael Moore-clarinet, bass clarinet, alt sax

Kristján Tryggvi Martinsson – piano, accordion, 

Ernst Glerum or Omer Govreen- bass

The Voice is the Matter presents a diverse mixture of styles – whimsical vocal improvisations, associative sound poetry, Slavic and Celtic folk melodies, unadulterated jazz and moving melodies composed by Michael Moore.  What connects this diversity is a personal and emotional connection with the music which creates an intimate sphere for the listener. The result is eclectic and accessible.

The Voice is the Matter is niet voor een gat te vangen:  zij  vertolken verschillende genres-  van grillige stemimprovisaties en associatieve klankpoezie,  tot Slavische  en Keltisch volksmelodieën, onvervalste jazz, en ontroerende melodieën van Michael Moore.  Wat verbindt deze combinatie van vormen and stijlen is een persoonlijke en emotionele band met de muziek voor de musici en het scheppen van een intieme band met de luisteraar.  Het resultaat is een afwisselend en toegankelijk programma.

reviews of tvitm:

Review by Thom Jurek

As an album, Voice Is The Matter lays somewhere on the vast terrain between Robin Holcomb’s plaintive first recording for Nonesuch, Elliot Carter’s  art songs, and the earliest recordings by Ran Blake with Jeanne Lee. Vocalist Jodi Gilbert teams with reed and woodwind master Michael Moore, bassist Ernst Glerum, and pianist/accordionist Alexei Levin

 on a recording that dusts the prairies with an earnest interpretation of “The Cuckoo,” a moving and sensual read of Macedonian folk songs (“Jovano Jovanke,” “Trugnal Mi Jane Sandanski”), some way-gone vocal histrionics with text (“Slicing Silence (Sinister Singing)”), a Poulenc setting  of a Shakespearean sonnet (“Fancy,”), improvisations, and untold other selections — 20 in all — that revisit the notion of the vocalist in cabaret, improvisational, and folk music settings. Gilbert is a disciplined singer who can sing old Irish songs like “My Lagan Love,” and “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies” with the best ˇof them. But she can throw her voice into the cracks and fissures of an improvising musical trio and add immeasurably to its depth and dimension, as she so bloodcurdlingly displays on “Shoots And Ladders.” Michael Moore’s own writing of texts for Gilbert is canny. His scripting of linguistic lines and phrases pulls his saxophone lines into complete synchronicity and harmonic convergence with her breath and the way she extends a line until it falls into the next, never quite breaking. This may not be a record for everybody, but for those who are willing to experience the multi-phonic magic of the human voice in many different contexts — all of which appear seamless on this disc — then this is a very special recording worthy of your time and attention. 

LEEUWARDEN.

 Een quintet met een half Amerikaanse en half Nederlandse bezetting, met de kanttekening dat de Amerikanen al geruime tijd in Nederland wonen. The Voice is The Matter is een formatie rond zangeres Jodi Gilbert, met Michael Moore op altsax en klarinetten, Cor Fuhler op piano keyboards en eigen gemaakte instrumenten, Ernst Glerum op contrabas en Michael Vatcher op drums. Een bezetting die staat als een huis.

Vocaliste Gilbert is niet voor een gat te vangen: van grillige stemimprovisaties tot liederen van Poulenc, van Slavische liederen tot onvervalste jazz….! Haar wendbare stem vertolkt moeiteloos verschillende genres: associatieve klankpoëzie, zwoele jazz, een nummer van Fleetwood Mac naast een liedje van Misha Mengelberg. Jodi Gilbert lijkt zich in alle nummers evenzeer op haar gemak te voelen. De bezoeker laat zich ook meeslepen door ontroerende melodieën van de beroemde rietblazer Michael Moore, die naast klarine¶t ook altsax en basklarinet speelt in deze formatie. Ondersteund wordt hij hierin door de levenslustige baslijnen van Ernst Glerum, die we kennen van o.a. Available Jelly, The Amsterdam String Trio en niet te vergeten het inmiddels roemruchte trio Borstlap-Bennink-Glerum. Verder trad hij op met groten als Lee Konitz, George Lewis, Jimmy Knepper e.v.a.

Aan o.a. de vleugel Cor Fuhler, een improvisator in hart en nieren. Speelt of speelde in formaties van Ernst van Altena het ICP Orchestra en het trio Fuhler-Bennink-De Joode en vele op zich staande projecten. Innovatief drummen treffen we aan bij Michael Vatcher, voor deze gelegenheid toegevoegd aan het oorspronkelijke kwartet van Jodi Gilbert. Deze tot Nederlander genaturaliseerde Amerikaan is een fenomeen daar waar het gaat om dynamiek naast subtiliteit in bewerken van het drumstel. Een lust om naar te luisteren. Een concert dat zeker boven het maaiveld uit zal stijgen.

“A combination of folk and improvised music is a credible option, as Ken Hyder’s fusion group Talisker so memorably demonstrated. The Voice is the Matter pursues these strands, but keeps them more or less discrete. So, on one track Jodi Gilbert lends her voice to a traditional Appalachian number. On others she sings Macedonian and Bulgarian folksongs, and the Irish air “My Lagan Love”. Elsewhere, she scats in sub-Shelly Hirsch mode. Moore, Glerum and Levin, with occasional help from drummer Vatcher, show equivalent versatility, shifting from abstract freeplaying to gentle chamber pieces, broadly reminiscent of ZNR. The result is an attractive patchwork, which sounds entirely consistent internally, despite its variousness.”

-The Wire, October 1998

RASP/HASP

JODI GILBERT(v) /WILBERT DE JOODE (cb)/ PAUL LOVENS(drums) /ANNE LA BERGE (fl)/ROCHARD BARRETT(electronics)

RASP -1. to scrape or abrade with a rough instrument  2. to utter with a grating sound 3.  a coarse file, used mainly on wood.  4. grater of cheese

HASP-1. a clasp for a door, lid, especially one passing over a staple and fastened by a pin or padlock.

 RASP, an initiative of vocalist Jodi Gilbert, is a trio which can function as an independent trio within the framework of “invited” guests who  act as wrenches in the mechanism, so to speak.  The repertoire consists of loosely composed/ partially improvised pieces, sometimes around a spoken/sung/gargled text, distilled from  political, humorous, satyrical  articles or stories, and other times coming out of the  instrumental abstract world of sound. 

Reviewers of the recent RASP/HASP CD, Mix Your Languages, (ramboy 19, 2004 ) observed that “Jodi Gilbert 

is an extraordinary improvising vocalist, unafraid of pushing 

her voice through all sorts of twists and turns (Bruce Gallanter) She is “in particular hard to pin down stylistically, alternating between straight spoken narrative and then also actually sings-pretty rare for an improvising vocalist these days” Bassist Wilbert de Joode has built up quite an international name  and Anne La Berge is also well-known in contemporary classical music. 

( Dan Warburton-Paris Transatlantic Magazine)

SPOON 3 + 1 FORK

Jodi Gilbert- voice/ little instruments/ text/

Albert van Veenendal- piano, prepared piano

Meinrad Kneer-contrabass

Robert van Heumen-lap top instrument

A classic trio  combination, piano, bass, voice , looking to fit in and subvert this well-known constellation.  Add live sampling and electronic sounds and beauty, confrontation, and adventure, teem up with  the   expressive possibilities offered within this transparent setting. 

We are searching to find real song forms,  using texts,  absurd, comic, and with a careful dose of pathos, the cliched anguish of emotions, juxtaposed with a sharp edge, and a

 tongue- in -cheek,  and then mixed with the sensibilities of an improvisation. Raw emotional texts, beautiful, poetic, histrionic, and angry, crossing over into vocalise that steers far away from jazz scat singing, but looks for the grooves that underlie it all. 

If we  can at least once get the audience to bounce in their seats. or smile at the absurdity of it all, then we have touched the heart of the matter.

RARA AVIS

  Rara Avis

Albert van Veenendaal-piano, prepared piano

Tineke de Jong- violin

Jodi Gilbert-voice, little instruments, texts

 A newly formed trio consisting of a virtuosic pianist who loves the simplicity of the struck chord and the sustaining note, but does not shy away from a driving rhythmic pulse,

a classically trained violinist venturing into a world of  open sounds and feelings of improvisation; the sensitive response from moment to moment, and a vocalist who is known for imaginative expressive acrobatics as well as pure melodic association with the ability to express through sound and text. 

After  inspiring and fruitful meetings of musical minds and sounds in a back garden studio texts were found, written, plucked from the air, and some notes were set on paper to weave gracefully here and there amongst the intuitive and often surprising moments of improvisation. Like the name implies, a rare and wonderfully strange world of transparent sounds and universally poetic texts that fly like a bird through the soundscape. A colorful  tribute to the potential to move and touch the listener through  melody, through harmony, through text and especially through the subtle interplay of NOW.  Improvised and slightly-composed musics that will tug at the heartstrings.

3 is a magic number

a trio is a magical configuration

3 string players:

the  strings of the violin bowed and scraped 

the strings of the piano,  hammered and plucked

the strings of the voice articulated  through breath and imagination

terrestrial. other- worldly , aerial displays,   a strolling cadence

He goes left, she goes right, she connects, 

places reversed, combinations transformed.

a full spectrum of vocabulary,

 a hidden message of sound.

Translucent and effervescent!

3 is a magic number

a trio is a magical configuration

ALL ELLINGTON

Jodi Gilbert – voice

Mo van der Does – alto sax and clarinet

Natalio Sued – tenor sax

Giuseppe Doronzo – baritone sax

Jimmy Sernesky – trumpet

Eric Boeren – cornet

Joost Buis – trombone

Oscar Jan Hoogland – piano

Wilbert de Joode – bass

Frank Rosaly – drums

The intergenerational Amsterdam collective All Ellington, started by Eric Boeren, has been playing music by Duke, Strayhorn and company since 2013. 

They play 1x a month in Amsterdam’s Zaal 100, (interrupted at present by Corona measures), the Bimhuis, throughout Holland,  as well as numerous festivals, oa North Sea Festival.

“wie de originele uitvoering van Solitude kent uit 1945 met zangeres Kay Davis, zal van verbazing schuiven op zijn stoel door de frisse versie van Jodi Gilbert en de rest van All Ellington.”

Rinus van der Heijden (Jazznu – 4 april 2019)

On three pieces singer Jodi Gilbert joins the nonet. She is typically heard in abstract and sometimes broadly expressive settings – try Spoon 3’s Seductive Sabotage (Evil Rabbit) – and mixes it up with the horns, in particular on Boeren’s broadly growly “Strange Feeling.” (But then here come those saxophones again.) She sings “Sophisticated Lady” and “Solitude” disarmingly straight, with sweetness (early on at least), the way Duke preferred ballads sung. She lays out the word “sol-i-tude” with even note values on the first two syllables, just as Ellington wrote it, where other singers tend to shorten that short i, swinging the word like a triplet. That small choice speaks to how closely they all mind the original texts, before heading for the hills. (KEVIN WHITEHEAD)

Meer vocale bijdragen kwamen van zangeres Jodi Gilbert, die evenzeer verraste met een prachtige vertolking van ‘Sophisticated Lady’ (men hoort niet vaak hoe mooi de tekst van dat stuk eigenlijk is) als met rijkelijk bizarre, raspende, schreeuwerige klanken. (David Cohen, Jazzenzo)

All Ellington

Glasheldere stem en vocale capriolen… (Renz van Peer)

On three pieces singer Jodi Gilbert joins the nonet. She is typically heard in abstract and sometimes broadly expressive settings – try Spoon 3’s Seductive Sabotage (Evil Rabbit) – and mixes it up with the horns, in particular on Boeren’s broadly growly “Strange Feeling.” (But then here come those saxophones again.) She sings “Sophisticated Lady” and “Solitude” disarmingly straight, with sweetness (early on at least), the way Duke preferred ballads sung. She lays out the word “sol-i-tude” with even note values on the first two syllables, just as Ellington wrote it, where other singers tend to shorten that short i, swinging the word like a triplet. That small choice speaks to how closely they all mind the original texts, before heading for the hills. (Kevin Whitehead)

Jodi Gilbert is an extraordinary improvising vocalist, unafraid of pushing her voice through all sorts of twists and turns. (Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music) 

She is in particular hard to pin down stylistically, alternating between straight spoken narrative and then also actually sings-pretty rare for an improvising vocalist these days”(Dan Warburton-Paris, Transatlantic Magazine)

Her voice is expressive, and haunting, while creating a mood all of its own…(Tom Sekowski) 

Vocaliste Gilbert is niet voor een gat te vangen: van grillige stemimprovisaties tot liederen van Poulenc, van Slavische liederen tot onvervalste jazz….! Haar wendbare stem vertolkt moeiteloos verschillende genres: associatieve klankpoëzie, zwoele jazz, een nummer van Fleetwood Mac naast een liedje van Misha Mengelberg. Jodi Gilbert lijkt zich in alle nummers evenzeer op haar gemak te voelen (Leeuwarden reviewer)

Gilbert is a disciplined singer who can sing old Irish songs like “My Lagan Love,” and “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies” with the best ˇof them. But she can throw her voice into the cracks and fissures of an improvising musical trio and add immeasurably to its depth and dimension… (Thom Jurek)

Seductive Sabotage: (Spoon 3)

Vocalist Jodi Gilbert; the presence of Gilbert, an artist with a wide vocal spectrum, pushes the sonority of the trio, which maintains a base of impro-jazz, towards territories that touch a form of song… skillful comedy dowries of Gilbert  ( Alberto Rastelli)

The fact that van Veenendaal and Kneer complement and understand one other well, is already known. Gilbert adds an extra dimension with her voice. These musicians can seduce, follow or complement one another beautifully, challenge one another and sabotage. In fact, to look for traditional song structures or classical harmonies is, in vain. Seductive sabotage is made up out of a variety of elements. The opening number no, no know no rest, is a good example. It starts with an open and clear improvisation of the piano and bass that eventually dissolves. Gilbert doubles the piano theme, and then goes further into a duel with Kneer, and uses here strange vocal effects (vibrato and tremolo). Gradually van Veenendaal brings in a tight accompaniment over which gilbert sings her text clearly. Kneer then takes over with a dramatically bowed bass improvisation, in which Gilbert sets in the last snippet of text “I cannot relax” and with an impressive vocal technique goes into the next part, the box. Effortlessly van Veenendaal goes from melodious and atmospheric to atonal and richly dissonant passages and Kneer plucks or bows introverted passages or lets his bass strings clash and grate. In one passage van Veendendaal makes use of samples to beautifully echo Gilbert’s spoken text. (Mischa Bekkers)

Jodi Gilbert feels at home in a variety of artistic disciplines. Besides being a successful singer, she is also an actress and dancer. This multi-facetness is also found in her vocal work in seductive sabotage. Not only does Gilbert possess a beautiful singing voice, she also excels as a vocal-artist par excellence. (Joachim Ceulemans)

There are singers who can sing beautiful songs, and there are singers who can do exciting improvisations. There are few that can do both. From the select few, there is one in Amsterdam who is for years underappreciated: the American Jodi Gilbert. In the new trio, Spoon 3, she finds at her side, the evil rabbit creators, Albert van Veenendaal (piano) and Meinrad Kneer( bass). With them she has found the perfect collaborators that feel just at home with strong structures as unplanned musical adventures. (Herman Te Loo)