DHRUPAD SINGING
FEBRUARY 15th to 18th, 2025
‘Dhrupad singing, a unique experience to experience the refined musicality, melisma and ornamentation of North Indian classical music’.
Marianne SVAŠEK will be accompanied by Henri TOURNIER
GENERAL CONTENT
Marianne Svašek uses her voice and tanpura to offer an experience suited to all types of musical background, enriching students’ practice and opening up new creative perspectives.
- Dhrupad and Khayal, the two main genres of North Indian classical music, Hindustani music.
- The tanpura, the role of the drone, an emblematic instrument of Indian music and an essential reference point for subtle awareness of pitch.
- Learning vocal techniques specific to Indian music.
- Simple exercises sung in Sargam, the note system of this tradition, adapted to the instruments.
- Teaching the oral tradition: learning a fixed structure for an Alap, a prelude.
- How to improvise in this prelude.
- Discovery of the Tala (rhythmic cycles) and their Theka (characteristic phrases) specific to the Dhrupad genre.
- Learning a Bandish (composition) in an appropriate Tala.
- How to improvise or make variations around this composition.
- Use of silence.
- Organising the structure of musical discourse in Dhrupad.
TERMS OF PARTICIPATION
- Open to singers and instrumentalists
- Minimum level: Good amateur
- Basic English may be a plus but is not necessary
Musicians must bring their own musical instrument (applications will be considered).
REGISTER NOW
>> ON-LINE REGISTRATION <<
>> RATES & REGISTRATION PROCESS <<
BIOGRAPHIES
MARIANNE SVAŠEK
Marianne was born in The Hague in 1959 and currently lives in Rotterdam. She speaks and teaches in Dutch, English, German, French and Czech.
As one the first students within the Indian music department at the Rotterdam Conservatory, she graduated cum laude in both singing and sarangi. Already as a student, she started working as a teaching assistant for ear training. Now she runs an intensive Dhrupad study programme both abroad and in her home teaching practice. She frequently visits Lithuania, Israel, France, Germany, the Czech Republic and other countries for workshops and concerts. She has also been a teacher and course leader at the Rotterdam Conservatory since 2001. Marianne has over 25 years of experience giving workshops and concerts across the world.
Being one of the first women to practice and learn Dhrupad, she wishes to encourage female representation within this style of music. Marianne learned with the renowned vocalist Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar in India from 1994 until his passing in 2013. She has also studied Sarangi with Joep Bor (musicologist and founder of World Music department at Rotterdam Conservatory) and Pandit Ram Narayan (Indian musician who popularized Sarangi as a solo concert instrument).
website : mariannesvasek
TOURNIER HENRI
Bansuri flutes, flutes, octo-bass
One of the great Western specialists of the bansuri flute, Henri Tournier is one of those musicians fascinated by the music of India, who have become, after a long career, the passionate ambassadors. He has been exploring for decades the possibilities of this instrument both in its context, that of the classical music of North India, as well as in that of world music and that of contemporary Western music.
It is Roger Bourdin, a legendary flute soloist of the traverse flute, who passed on to him his passion for improvisation, and it was improvisation that led him to Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia. He followed his teaching, and became his assistant and then guest professor at the Rotterdam-Codarts Conservatory for more than twenty-seven years.
Henri Tournier has built his own language as an improviser and composer, under the prism of bansuri flutes and Western flutes. He multiplies musical experiences, meetings and recordings on the international scene. Professor for the class of Modal Improvisation and Music of India at the Conservatoire National de Musique de Paris CNSMDP from 2016 to 2022, solo musician very invested in transmission, his artistic development is part of contexts where his sharing of experience takes a decisive place.
Henri Tournier is the author of the reference work “Hariprasad Chaurasia & the Art of Improvisation” book-2 CDs, a publication Accords-Croisés/Rotterdam-Codarts.