This year has been one for the history books! It’s been a challenging year for the Shine Music School. However, with the hard work that both the students and teachers have put in, we have successfully navigated a move online, and with that been able to stay connected to each other and to our music.
Online lessons have many benefits, but we have also enjoyed coming back to our open Studios in Barcelona this summer. We have welcomed new students from across the world, and successfully taught many of you from our homes across the world. Our Shine Team has worked hard to make learning and discovering music a joy! We have introduced you to games and musical activities for lockdowns, ideas for making home studios, movies with great soundtracks and our teachers live concerts as they regularly perform on Instagram and Facebook.
With our newsletters we have introduced a number of teachers and their musical inspirations, and we will continue to provide musical entertainment and discussions via our blog on our online website. If you are not already signed up, join the Shine family!
Without further ado, let’s watch Shine Music School’s first ever ONLINE concert!
SHINE ONLINE MUSIC CONCERT 6PM CET 25 JULY 2020
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Branislav Grbic teaches classical violin and world music violin. At the Shine School of Music in Barcelona, he teaches students of all levels, specializing in Balkan, Sephardic, Irish as well as Turkish music. He was born in Belgrade (Serbia) in 1970, to a family of musicians. In 1991 Bane arrived in Barcelona, and began a new era in his professional life. He was a notable student at the Conservatori Superior de Barcelona in J. Pamiès’s class and until 2002 he performed in 4 chamber orchestras and 3 symphony orchestras in Catalunya. He regularly plays with his band Los Moussakis. He has also collaborated with international artists such as Goran Bregovic, Rebecca Horn, Sara Montiel, Gloria Gaynor and Azúcar Moreno. We asked him some questions about his interest in music:
* What was the first thing that made you interested in music?
The fact that I was born into a family of professional musicians in the field of classical music, made me start very early learning the art of music, and later I dedicated myself to the violin for life as my work and passion.
My grandfather was a violinist, composer, choir and orchestra conductor, teacher, and theologian. Studying in Prague in the 1920s of the last century, and on his return to the homeland, he made a great reform in Serbian culture, dedicating his life to the prosperity of classical music in many fields. He has published 7 books on the violin methodology, the most famous “Zlatne Stepenice”. In 1954, the municipal music school of about 600 students in his hometown Valjevo was named after him “Zivorad Grbic”.
My father was also a violinist, concertmaster of the Belgrade National Opera Orchestra and professor at the Belgrade Higher Conservatory. My mother was an opera singer, two aunts were piano teachers and her children, my cousins, are also professionally dedicated to music.
I spent my childhood running through the corridors of the Belgrade National Opera building, from one dressing room to the other, then to the stage, orchestra pit, chicken coop, machinists, hairdressers… let’s say this building was my playground, along with endless trips with the whole company to European countries, Italy, France…
This was what made me interested in music, and stage art in general.
*Who inspired you to make music?
It was my parents who initially inspired me to make music. At home, music was heard at all hours, my mother singing opera and traditional songs, or my father playing and studying difficult passages of classical, symphonic, opera or chamber music…. We also had and listened to a very good record player, and the very extensive vinyl collection that is still preserved.
Then, at 16, I started playing as first violin, concertmaster, in a Young Symphony Orchestra of Belgrade, and the inspiration to make the music also came from the other 80 best young musicians in Serbia, who together played great musical works in concerts in the entire territory of the former Yugoslavia, including trips to other European countries.
* How would you describe the music you normally make?
I have had different stages in my life of exercising music. As a classical professional violinist, 18-33 years old, I have worked in numerous philharmonic, symphonic or chamber orchestras … Therefore it was an experience of making music already written, looking for textures and ensemble color, playing in the halls and auditoriums where the public is sitting and listening.
From 33-48 years old, I ventured into traditional-popular music from the Balkans, with Los Moussakis. This type of music is something very personal and different from what I did before. It requires another type of energy, presence and personal dedication in a group of only 6 people. Many times, there were no scores either, and therefore more freedom in expression, especially in solos, the atmosphere was very festive and danceable and the audience actively participated with the band.
At the moment, I’m very interested in “techno” electronic music, combined with real sounds and musicians, also in “mystical” and microtonal music… .. At home I am playing classical, balkan, klezmer, tango,… ..also, as I have many scores, sometimes I open any book and read it, I play… to discover that it is in the sea of notes. The excitement of translating written notes into live notes is very nice, which you see and hear the first time!
* What is your creative process ?
I’m really passionate about “turning” the songs. I use the traditional-folk songs of the Balkans and changed their speed, harmony and rhythm, giving them a new life in the different form of vertical musical arrangement. Let’s say I like to keep the old melody, with new elements “inside” in the structure. Many times, or almost always, in this creative process other musicians intervene with their knowledge and personal intuition.
* If you could collaborate with any musician, who would it be?
I have had the opportunity to play with many musicians of international stature, such as Goran Bregovic. Collaborating with any musicians of this stature always carries a special magic and learning in different aspects. I would have liked to play with Stevie Wonder, without a doubt! I love the way violins treat their songs. Especially “My Cherie Amour” or “For Once in My Life”. I would also like to play with the Jamiroquai, the string arrangements are very danceable. Bill Withers, Quincy Jones … … there are many teachers. I would also be just as excited playing with a band of gypsies from Serbia or Macedonia in a few days long pantagruélica party, in the countryside! And the Berlin Philharmonic, I can’t even mention, it would be the best!
* If you could choose to open any musician’s show, whose would it be?
Maybe “Gogol Bordello”, “Kultur Shock” or Emir Kusturica & “No Smoking Orkestra”. Besides hoping that they invited me to play the gig with them, we would have a good party after the concert all together.
*Do you sing in the shower?
Yes, I sing in the shower, although before morning coffee it doesn’t sound very lively. Also, I always change songs… lately I’m with “Brother to Brother” by Gino Vannelli!
* Of your concerts, which one have you most enjoyed and why?
Ugh, it is impossible to highlight a specific concert. All the performances are a journey and experience of a set of things, absolutely unrepeatable. It is always enjoyed when there are good conditions to act, especially good sound and good vibration among the musicians. Each concert has a magical moment, and it is good to remember it. I think in music there is a fact that whenever you try to play a song in the same way, it never comes out the same, and it will sound different. It is the mystery of the unknown … is this version the best?
* Where would you like to do a concert?
I have had the opportunity to play with different formations on the most prestigious and beautiful stages, theatres and auditoriums in Spain and in other European countries.
Theatres, auditoriums, outdoor stages….But what would really be science fiction, and who wouldn’t enjoy it? To play in orbit, of course! When I started with the group Los Moussakis in 2002, one of my dreams was to play the New Year’s Eve 2024/25 on one of these space tourist flights. Surely the honor will be given to Brian Eno.
* What famous musicians do you admire?
Ugh, another question where I can’t give a concrete answer. I admire all musicians, good and bad, famous or not, boring and innovative, slow, fast… .All musicians are sometimes famous. I don’t know, to say one… ..Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, is he famous?
* What has been the best advice you have been given?
There have been many tips received and well taken and digested, I’m still open to hear the odd tip that can lead one to practical wisdom.
* How do you think the internet has impacted the music industry?
I think that above all it has impacted the methods of selling music. Basically, now music is not sold in any physical medium. In the past, the musician also earned a continual bonus in the sale of CDs. K7s or vinyl were also objects that in themselves were art and reflected the style of music you found inside and added to the whole package. Downloading-buying a CD from some sales platform seems to me as if it had less weight …. I don’t know, I’m a romantic for these things …. hehe.
* If you could change something about the music industry, what would it be?
From the point of view of a spectator and a musician, I think that in general, cities have too few small-medium spaces( with capacity for 50-150 people) for live music. The public and private sectors should come together to create subsidies for opening new spaces or expanding on local permits, this could provide sustainable work for an entire army of musicians and the various sector companies that work alongside live music in the area.
* Regarding the violin. Do you think it is a popular instrument today and why?
Yes, I think it is still a very popular instrument. There are public figures that still make it more popular, such as Ara Malikian. Also Anne-Sophie Mutter or Stephane Grappelli. My favorite violinist is David Oistrakh. Also the crazy violins of the Romanian fanfare bands, such as the Tarafs of Haidouks, have made the violin popular as an instrument. Violin has magic …. you have to work hard at it, but then it has a nice reward.
* Virtual teaching. Yes or no?
Of course a big yes! As long as it is combined with the face-to-face classes. Virtual classes take advantage of the student’s tranquility in their environment, they are less distracted or tired. Personally, with my students, I take advantage of these classes to work on “boring” things like scales, arpeggios or studies … At the moment, the double notes on violin, by the ZOOM, sound pretty bad. Another thing about virtual classes is that it is very important to have good electronic devices, or a quality external microphone and sound card.
Each year the Shine School of Music in Barcelona hosts a concert. It’s a unique opportunity for students to perform for a live audience, and get a taste or experience of performing for a crowd and certainly a chance to show off what they have accomplished with their teachers.
Our concerts have grown, from one small concert once a year to now a series of concerts during the year, and each one just gets better and better! As we get ready for our first online music concert, we want to take a look back at some of our student’s and teacher’s performances over the years.
We hope that you tune in with us for the concert this year. It will be a first for us, in that it will be streamed online. We really look forward to what our talented students and teachers have put together.
The recent Black Lives Matter protests in the US and all over the world have triggered a positive interest in educating ourselves on understanding racism and acknowledging its prevalence in our societies. Knowledge of our history can empower us all to make the right changes to move forward and build a world that is equal, and that celebrates different cultures.
The history of music is no different, and it is impossible to not recognise the genius of a multitude of black musicians, or ignore their contributions and advancements of the art. Despite this, in the past 200 years, many black composers have almost been forgotten or overlooked, and struggled against the odds to be heard. Even now, their symphonies and operas, concertos and quartets are often ignored, and remain underperformed.
Shine Music School made its start in post apartheid South Africa, and we are well aware of the institutionalised inequalities in our everyday lives. Even so, we still have a long way to go in educating ourselves. Let’s stop being silent, stop standing by and advocate for change! Let’s uplift and support black musicians and composers. In today’s article, we look at 6 fascinating musical composers and highlight some of their works.
Listen to their music, play and perform their pieces, and applaud their contribution!
Our first composer is non other than Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799). If you are a music history buff you will have heard of him. This guy led an extraordinary life. Full of swashbuckling adventure, politics, kings, queens, drama and last but not least music! It’s the stuff of movies! Born in the French Caribbean, the son of a wealthy plantation owner and a 16 year old female slave; Joseph Bologne, or Saint-Georges (as he is better known) was brought to France at a young age by his father, where he continued to spend most of the rest of his life.
St-Georges grew up in French high society but his heritage restricted him in many ways. He was both unique because of his colour and status, but for the same reasons was never able to marry and although his musical expertise was recognised, he was not allowed to take on certain appointments, such as the director of the Académie royale de musique, the Paris Opéra.
He made a name for himself as a champion fencer, even fighting off four men in an attempted assassination for his political involvements. At one point he lived in the same house as Mozart, and indeed may have influenced his younger counterpart. He was a prolific composer (with a multitude of operas, violin concertos, symphonies and numerous chamber works under his belt) and talented violin player. Saint-Georges even played intimate concerts for Marie Antoinette, and a performance of of his second opera, La Chasse was performed at her request at the royal chateau at Marly. He became a colonel in the French Legion during the Revolution. After the Revolution shattered France, St-Georges was forced out of the army with little to show for his accomplishments, he returned to his music, and continued to compose and perfect his violin playing. He died at the age of 53 from what seems to have be gangrene. Read more about his music and fascinating escapade here.
Harry Lawrence Freeman (1869 – 1954) was the first African-American to write an opera (Epthalia, 1891) that was successfully produced. He was a composer, musician, conductor and music teacher and founded the Freeman School of Music and the Freeman School of Grand Opera. During his lifetime, he was known as “the black Wagner.”
Around 1908, Freeman moved his family to the Harlem neighbourhood of New York City where the Harlem Renaissance was just getting into swing. Freeman’s work was already well renowned and sometime in 1912, ragtime composer Scott Joplin, who was then living in New York, asked Freeman to assist in revising his three-act opera, “Treemonisha,” production of which had halted the previous year. Freeman opened a music school in New York.
Freeman composed a number of operas and other musical work, most famous, his opera Voodoo.
“The last couple of decades of his life he struggled to get any performances of his work. Almost all of his music was unpublished at the time of his death, and no recordings of his work have ever been released commercially. Twenty-one of his operas, as well as many of his other works, survive in Freeman’s own manuscripts, and are kept in a collection of his papers at Columbia University” (source)
Scott Joplin (1868 – 1917) was an American composer and pianist. Nicknamed the King of Ragtime, he was most renowned for his ragtime pieces, including his most famous composition “Maple Leaf Rag” which today would be considered the Billboard all time number one hit of ragtime. He was a prolific composer, and wrote two operas, although these were less popular, and he struggled to become recognised for his classical compositions. He taught piano, and although his popular hit helped to support him for the duration of his life, he frequently found himself in financial straits and the score to his first opera, A Guest of Honor, was confiscated in 1903 with his belongings for non-payment of bills, and is now considered lost. (source) None of his operas were performed in his lifetime, and ragtime music died with him. He was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize in the 1970s, and Treemonisha was finally performed. His ragtime compositions have influenced jazz and big band swing music.
Florence B Price (1887-1953) was a classical composer, pianist, organist and music teacher. She became the first African American woman to have a work played by a major orchestra. In 1933 the Chicago Symphony performed her Symphony in E minor for the first time. Although she is considered to be successful in her life time, her numerous compositions are rarely played today. If you consider the era when she was writing and performing music, her accomplishments are enormous.
Florence grew up in the American south. Her family was well to do and she was a whip-smart, valedictorian of her class. She escaped some prejudice by identifying as Mexican during her studies in Boston, but later returned to the south and married only to move again during what is known as the Great Migration to escape Jim Crow conditions in the deep south. The Price family eventually settled in Chicago. Despite the odds of being black and a woman, she studied composition, orchestration, and the organ with the best teachers in the city, and published four pieces for piano in 1928. Her marriage fell apart and Florence worked hard to support herself and her children. Price made considerable use of characteristic African-American melodies and rhythms in many of her works. (source) She won various musical awards and wrote numerous pieces for Orchestras, and for film and advertising under a pen name. Despite this she was almost forgotten until “in 2009, a substantial collection of her works and papers were found in an abandoned dilapidated house on the outskirts of St. Anne, Illinois.These consisted of dozens of her scores, including her two violin concertos and her fourth symphony. As Alex Ross stated in The New Yorker in February 2018, “not only did Price fail to enter the canon; a large quantity of her music came perilously close to obliteration. That run-down house in St. Anne is a potent symbol of how a country can forget its cultural history.” (source)
Her work has currently received some more airplay and recognition:
Francis “Frank” Johnson (1792 – 1844) was another prolific African-American composer during the Antebellum period. You can read more about that time period in our article on The Banjo. African American composers were scarce in America during this period, but Johnson was among the few who were successful. This guy could do it all! Performing on the (now rare) keyed Kent bugle and the violin, he wrote hundreds of compositions in a multitude of styles— Operatic airs, Ethiopian minstrel songs, patriotic marches and various dances. Johnson was the first African American composer to have his works published as sheet music. His dance music was published and played at balls across the country. Only his manuscripts and piano transcripts survive today. He even performed for Queen Victoria. He also was the first African American to give public concerts and the first to participate in racially integrated concerts in the United States.
Since no actual recordings of his work exist and critic of the day did not go into much details, historians surmise that Johnsons work included many details which are not recorded on the actual publications of his transcripts. According to wikipedia:
“Available accounts show that his composition and playing must have had qualities which cannot be reconstructed from the surviving manuscripts. Historical accounts suggest that his performances infused stylistic rhythmic changes, differing from the written versions, which were either inferred by performers or instructed verbally. This is presumed to be similar to the improvisations made by jazz musicians today, although the current practices and idioms are probably vastly different from the ones used by Johnson. He was able to create interesting music, harmonies, and effects that differed from the diatonic harmonies and triadic melodies that were popular at that time.”
His performances must have been something to see!
And finally George Walker, (1922 -2018), was the first black American classical composer to be awarded the Pulitzer prize for music (for Lilacs, a piece for voice and orchestra, in 1996) while still alive. Walker balanced a career as a concert pianist, teacher, and composer. He was a man of firsts, first black instrumentalist to appear with the Philadelphia Orchestra, first black instrumentalist to be signed by a major management, the National Concert Artists. He became first black recipient of a doctoral degree from Eastman School of Music and the list goes on! Walkers’ body of work included over 90 works for orchestra, chamber orchestra, piano, strings, voice, organ, clarinet, guitar, brass, woodwinds, and chorus. However, for all his accomplishments, he still remains a cult figure in the world of contemporary composition. (read more here)
You may not think you are good at singing, but everyone can sing! Even if you sing on your own, in your room with headphones on and no-one around! There are some surprising health benefits to singing out loud! And just the same as anything, with a little help and training you can improve your singing. So if you ever wanted to enjoy singing even more, we can encourage you to take a singing lesson! If the following reasons don’t make you want to give it a go, at least keep on singing in the shower!
Singing strengthens the immune system
Research conducted at the University of Frankfurt, confirmed that singing boosts the immune system. The study included testing a profesional choir during a rehearsal singing Mozart’s “Requiem”. The researchers observed that the amount of Immunoglobulin A (a protein in the immune system that work as antibodies), were much higher right after the rehearsal. The same increases were not seen in the choir members who passively listened to the music.
Sounds are believed to improve specific aspects of your health and there are at least 5 different sounds you can sing to improve your bodies overall function:
Singing the short “a” sound (as in ahh) for 2-3 minutes will help you to stop feeling sad. It forces oxygen into the blood & brain, which in turn triggers a release of endorphins.
The short “e” sound (as in ‘echo’) makes the thyroid gland produce hormones that help to improve digestion & metabolism.
The long “e” sound (as in ‘see’) stimulates the pineal gland, boosting your alertness & learning. Try this before studying!
The long “o” sound (as in ‘open’) helps the pancreas and can regulate blood sugar after a meal.
The double “o” sound (as in ‘cool’) makes the spleen/immune system to boost infection-fighting white blood cells.
Let’s get singing to help our bodies fight off Corona Virus! We certainly need all the help we can get!
Singing is a workout
Have you ever found yourself tired after a good Karaoke session? Singing can be an excellent form of exercise, especially for those who are unable to like the older generation or those who are physically disabled. If you’re healthy, your lungs will still get a serious workout if you use the correct singing techniques. And you may be working muscles that you don’t generally use in other forms of exercise. Singing stimulates your overall circulation. And we all know that more oxygen benefits your whole body! Singing may even help to increase your aerobic capacity and stamina.
Singing improves your posture
The more you sing, the stronger your lungs become. As you work your chest muscles, your chest cavity expands, your shoulders and back align, and eventually it all works together, lifting and straightening your posture. Standing up straight is part of correct technique for singing. Your singing teacher will agree. And a good posture relieves back and neck strain!
Singing helps with sleep
Do you snore? Does your partner? Who can sleep with all this snoring going on? Well singing may be the answer to sweet dreams! According to a health article in Daily Mail Online, experts believe singing can help strengthen throat and palate muscles, which helps stop snoring and sleep apnea.
Singing combats Anxiety & Depression
As you sing, your brain triggers a release of endorphins. These help to alleviate depression, anxiety, and stress. Studies have even shown that singing can decrease our cortisol levels, which are responsible for stress. Singers often experienced improved mood and increased relaxation.
