This year’s ICAF includes two phenomenal community music workshops. On Thursday afternoon, Luc Mishalle (Belgium) will facilitate a three-hour long production-oriented music workshop for musicians of all backgrounds and competency levels. If you want to join, you’ll need to bring along your own percussion or melody instrument. Together with you, Luc will first lay down a basis of Moroccan flavoured rhythmical patterns (shaa bi, ra ï, gnawa) before weaving in melodic patterns in order to create a colourful festive kind of music. The participants themselves will determine the length and the sound nuances of the pieces.
On Friday afternoon, Michael Romanyshyn (USA) invites you to co-create with him a symphony with four movements and produce a short symphonic work in three hours with the title: The City of Empty Rooms. The score will develop collaboratively during the workshop. Your level of musical education or skill is not important. The crucial thing is your willingness to listen, share and play. The only condition of the workshop is that you bring your own musical instrument of any type. Contributions of poetry by refugees in any language are also encouraged.
Michael Romanyshyn is a theater artist, musician and composer. He was with the Bread and Puppet Theater for 17 years before founding and directing theater spaces in New York City and in rural Maine. He has worked with groups of trained and untrained musicians and artists on theatrical and musical projects all over the world, developing collaborative methods of composition and theatrical production. He is the Musical Director of Archa Theatre’s Allstar Refjudzi Band.
Luc Mishalle is artistic director of MET-X, a house for music makers based in Brussels. For many years now, he has been a well-known figure in both the professional music scene and on city streets and squares. He works in a theatre context as well as in contemporary and improvisational music. His frequent collaboration with Moroccan percussionists has resulted in the formation of music ensembles Marakbar, Al-Harmonia, Remork, and Marockin’ Brass.