Aviva Chernick leads a Freeing the Voice workshop

It saddens me to have to report that this workshop has been cancelled due to low registration. I hope that we will reschedule for another date when more people are available soon. If you did register, you should have received an email from heather@labourdoula.com notifying you of the cancellation. (05/31/13)

If you are a doula in Toronto or the surrounding area, you are invited to attend a wonderful workshop with Aviva Chernick on June 2nd, 2013. It will be held at a private studio in central Toronto. Cost is $45 per doula. Email heather@labourdoula.com to register. Participants should bring a yoga mat. Space is limited, so register today!

FREEING the VOICE : Vocal Play and Care for Doulas

This three hour adventure is an opportunity for participants to surprise themselves as they discover the pleasure of finding their voice and singing out in community.
We begin with a gentle Hatha Yoga practice that moves into a standing practice of breath, yawns and sighs, finally inviting voice to follow. We continue on through a repetition of simple melodies, finding our way to improvisational set of song circles. Together we review what tools may be found in an improvisational took kit, i.e., unison, harmony, fills, rhythm, echoing, listening, etc and use these tools to enter into and discover our voices anew in a simple, repeated melody.

We will be focusing on vocal play, exploration and caring for doula’s own voices and how this, in turn, might serve your work with others.  The session will include an opportunity to speak about relationship to voice and the ramifications and benefits of this work for the work of doulas.

No previous yoga or singing experience is necessary.

AVIVA CHERNICK:

Aviva is a singer and award winning composer, writing, recording, performing and touring a fusion of World Music styles in Hebrew, Judeo-Spanish, English and French.  Her compositions and voice can be heard with the two–time Juno Nominated Global Roots Ensemble Jaffa Road, in her own Devotional Music project released December 2012 and through a Virginia Folklife sponsored apprenticeship with Master teacher Flory Jagoda in a collection of Balkan Judeo-Spanish repertoire.

Aviva has been training in the Bel Canto technique and the development of that practice with Fides Krucker with whom she has apprenticed as a teacher since 2009.  Aviva is also a Hatha yoga teacher trained at the Esther Myers Yoga Studio, in Toronto.  She has combined her practices, as well as her work as a prayer leader, merging body and breath to facilitate group workshops in freeing the voice towards singing. These workshops for both amateur and professional singers culminate in solo and group improvisation.

Aviva has been teaching privately as well as leading these workshops as ongoing classes through her own studio in Toronto and for a variety of communities around North America including; at The 2012 Ontario Multifaith conference, and while on tour with groups in Atlanta, Ottawa, Perth and Haida Guay, British Columbia.

SOME COMMENTS FROM PAST PARTICIPANTS

I took a short workshop with Aviva and it was one of the most transformative hours I have spent. Under her guidance I was able to understand for the first time in my life how to free my voice and sing. Friends of mine will tell you I can’t sing. But now they are wrong.

Andy McKim, Artistic Director Theatre Passe Muraille

I’m still buzzing from the workshop…singing brings me so much joy, release, power…

Suzanne Bradley Siskind, Teacher and Mother

Over the course of an intensive festival week full of lots of singing, Aviva’s class saved my voice.  Her whole-body approach helped me discover new ways to use my posture and breath to support my singing.  In a renewing, dynamic way, Aviva’s class unlocked my voice in completely new ways.

Ri Turner, Singer and Composer, Participant at the Jewish Women’s Music Festival, 2010