regular news about vocal instant composition ensemble Genetic Choir
We will start a new regular training ground for Genetic Choir singing, with a focus on developing your vocal skills! The Genetic Choir Lab will be every other week on Wednesday evenings, starting after the summer vacation.
Do you want to become more skilled at singing a variety of sounds and musical styles with your own voice? In the Genetic Choir Lab, you will research and train your voice and listening skills, then use it in group improvisations Genetic Choir style.
Dates: September 3 and 17, October 1, 15 and 29, November 12 and 26 and December 10, 2025
Time: 18:30-21:30
Note that you can only join this training group is you have done at least one Genetic Choir intro workshop before.
You will learn about your personal vocal technique, sing with a more resonant voice, become more technically proficient and in many other ways become more familiar with the instrument that is your voice, allowing you to sing more freely.
We will spend the first hour focusing on voice training, then dive into Genetic Choir group improvisations with lots of singing and making music together.
The Genetic Choir Lab is guided by Jeannette Huizinga, Genetic Choir singer of the first hour and singing teacher with an incredible amount of embodied voice knowledge, from Estill Voice Training to Lichtenberger.
Seats are limited, make sure you can join if you are interested in this!
Subscribe directly here, or click here for more info.
There is a new four-page article about the way we create music in the Genetic Choir! Read it here.
The theme of the 2024 issue of IMPROFIL was ‘Material’:
How is musical material created, how is it edited and processed in the ‘limitless’ context of free improvisation?
As an answer to this, Thomas Johannsen wrote an article that explains Genetic Choir principles. It was published in december in IMPROFIL #87, and you can read up on it in this pdf.
All 87 Improfil journals and their themes can by the way be looked up and ordered here. Consider signing up for receiving the yearly journal via bestellung@improfil-ring-de. It is a great resource for the development of improvisation and should be supported!
Upcoming Genetic Choir workshops:
29 March – Intro Workshop Genetic Choir
31 May + 1 June – Melody Makers – weekend workshop
Sometimes people think Genetic Choir is just about making music from random crazy sounds, but no, we love melodies too! 
Meer info en reserveren: click hier.
Improvising with melodies is a beautiful skill to train, especially when it comes to working together with a group of singers. And of course, we wouldn’t be Genetic Choir if we were not investigative as well as playful with this subject: What is actually a melody? What is definitely not a melody (and who decides that)? Is there always meaning, story, feeling in a melody or can it also do without and still be interesting?
Expect a weekend full of surprises and swinging music, working with a dedicated group on creating heartfelt music from the moment. Read more….
Marion Tränkle and Ivo Bol (NOW) are creating together with Genetic Choir an interactive vocal concert & performance about pollution measurements and air quality in Amsterdam. We have another twelve days for preparations and rehearsals and will present the piece’s premiere on Friday next week in the Pleintheater.
Friday, 7 February 2025
20:00
Pleintheater, Sajetplein 39, 1091 DB Amsterdam
Reserve your ticket here
Pollution values from the nearby Mauritskade are used in the live performance as a guideline and threshold for changes in the instantly composed music. The changing levels of the particulate matter (fijnstof) measurements are a determining factor that changes the score of the singers, the sounds, and the lighting live. The audience is taken along in the game of determining threshold values (which differ globally and locally), in order to provide insight into the complex issues surrounding air pollution: How do we deal with the sum of our behavior (mobility = pollution), and how can we make choices in this as a community?
TNO-researcher Astrid Manders is a special guest in the performance and will contribute her knowledge on this both scientific and political issue.
Singers: Esther van Maanen, Jeannette Huizinga, Marjolijn Roeleveld, Martine van Ditzhuyzen, Thomas Johannsen
Scores/Vocal concepts: Thomas Johannsen
Light design and programming: Marion Tränkle
Sound design: Ivo Bol
Overal concept: Marion Tränkle & Ivo Bol
Our dementia project Stem&Luister is growing so much that we decided to make a separate newsletter for it!
Read the New Years newsletter of Stem&Luister here.
So from now on, there will be a dedicated Stem&Luister newsletter (in Dutch), next to the general Genetic Choir newsletter (in both Dutch and English). If you already receive our general newsletter and you also want to receive updates about Stem&Luister, let us know here.
If you only receive these blog messages in your inbox, but never saw a Genetic Choir newsletter (like this one) with a wider summary of what’s going on, you can sign up for it here.
Last not least, we are making the move to Mastodon and intend to leave Facebook for good (yay 
!)
Join us there: https://mastodon.social/@improvisation
“Every knowledge that is not in your bones is just a rumour.”
Concerning Genetic Choir training, this proverb explains perfectly why Genetic Choir singers spend so much time in training together. There is no short-cut to becoming a swarm improviser other than doing it: Spending hours training and singing together, in order to not just have your mind, but also have your body and spirit understand what it is about. So that without thinking, you can sing and compose together – automagically.
Every half year, Genetic Choir invites to a series of Friday Morning workshops with a set group of participants, so that anyone who is interested can attempt to get the magic of Genetic Choir singing in their bones!
The next Friday Morning series will count 9 sessions divided in three small blocks. Here are the new dates:
31 jan, 7 feb, 14 feb
28 feb, 7 march, 14 march
28 march, 4 april, 11 april
We will either make two groups (9:00-11:00 and 11:30-13:30) or one bigger group with starting time 10:00-12:30. This will be decided in January when reservations have come in.
Find more information and the possibility to reserve a place by clicking here.
The Genetic Choir Ensemble is looking for a communication/community specialist concerning our dementia project Stem&Luister and our ambition to develop a diverse community of volunteers. Read the job description below!
As the job requires Dutch language and a network in Amsterdam, we kept the description in Dutch. Do forward it if you think you know someone who would be perfect for the job. 
Genetic Choir zoekt een Communicatiespecialist
met affiniteit voor verkennend onderzoek in cultureel diverse gemeenschappen in Amsterdam
Het Genetic Choir in Amsterdam is op zoek naar een researcher / communicatiespecialist voor het muzikale participatieproject Stem&Luister | 4 – 6 uur per week | Start maart 2025 | Freelance
In het Stem&Luister project werkt Genetic Choir direct samen met bewoners in de laatste fase van dementie op de gesloten afdelingen van verpleeghuizen. Samen met getrainde vrijwilligers bezoeken de professionele zangers van het ensemble iedere week de gedeelde huiskamers tijdens de middag. Daarnaast organiseert het ensemble trainingen aan het personeel, verzorgers en familie rondom betekenisvol contact maken in het moment.
Het project draait momenteel goed en jaarlijks groeit de community van vrijwilligers. Vanwege de grote mix aan culturele achtergronden die we in de verpleeghuizen aantreffen, zowel wat betreft de bewoners als de zorgmedewerkers, familie en naasten, is een van onze ambities voor de komende jaren om ook de vrijwilligers community van Stem&Luister zangers cultureel diverser te maken om zo muzikaal nog beter aan te kunnen sluiten op de mensen in het verpleeghuis.
Daarom zoeken we een onderzoeker / communicatiespecialist die onderzoek kan doen en samen met ons strategieën kan ontwikkelen hoe deze ambitie te verwezenlijken, en deze plannen vervolgens ook uit te voeren. In deze rol zal je onderzoek doen naar de muzikale aanrakingspunten van mensen met niet-Nederlandse achtergrond met het project Stem&Luister. We willen onderzoeken hoe er in andere culturele gemeenschappen met (de zorg voor) mensen met vergevorderde dementie wordt omgegaan. Welke rol speelt in deze gemeenschappen muziek en zingen in het contact met ouderen die zich niet meer verbaal kunnen uiten? Hoe brengen we de speelse, maar ook vrij moderne aanpak van improviserend zingen binnen Stem&Luister naar deze gemeenschappen om ook daar vrijwilligers voor het project te werven?
Na het onderzoeken en ontwerpen van een strategie is ook de uitvoering van de werving specifiek in deze gemeenschappen (ondersteund door ons team) onderdeel van jouw rol.
Wat neem jij mee:
Wat houdt de functie verder in:
Bij interesse, neem contact op met artistiek leider van Genetic Choir Thomas Johannsen, via thomas@genetic-choir.org. Voor meer informatie over Stem&Luister kun je een kijkje nemen op de website van het gezelschap.
Genetic Choir singers were invited to give a concert and two workshops on a national Symposium on Music & Dementia in Hamburg, Germany. Here some photo impressions of the concert on 27 September 2024, in which we first let the audience make some ‘Ear Music’ themselves (with thanks to a piece of Daisuke Terauchi) and then sang two instant composition pieces, both amongst the audience and on stage.
It was a great experience and we were welcomed very warmly. Also the two Genetic Choir workshops the next day were both overbooked and greeted with great enthousiasm on behalf of the participants. Hamburg, we will return!
For those interested in the themes&guests of the “Tagung Musik und Demenz”, find the programme here and the symposium report here.
The photos are from Jann Wilken, with a big thanks to him for the permission to show them here!
This week on Friday at 17:00, you are invited to join an unofficial work-in-progress showing of the project “Luchtstilte” that we are developing together with NOW (Marion Tränkle and Ivo Bol)
“Luchtstilte” is a project in which NOW is measuring local air quality (around the traffic-rich Mauritskade, close to the Pleintheater and residential areas) and translating it into a performance of light, sound and voices inside the theater. What are the ‘critical values’ of air pollution that we set ourselves, as a city, as a community, and what are the consequences of defining critical values higher or lower?
The Genetic Choir is using its original definition of being “a small human society that interacts in sounds and silences” to make the approach of critical values in air pollution experiential in music.
Read here more about the project – the premiere is planned on 7 February 2025.
This week, we are working on the first concepts for the performance and would be happy to have a test-audience to give us feedback!
Where: Pleintheater, Sajetplein 39, 1091 DB Amsterdam
When: Friday, 22 November, 17:00
Entrance is free, we will pick you up at the entrance of the theater.
Genetic Choir will give this Saturday morning a concert in the Jungle in Amsterdam, as part of the Song of Yoga series: A yoga class combined with a concert. Illustrious improvisers like Ernst Reijseger and Erik Bosgraaf were in the monthly line-up this year, so we are in great company.
Bring your mat and experience the Genetic Choir who will accompany, deepen and trigger the yoga practice of the yogi/listeners! —> Reservations here.
Saturday 16 November 2024
11:00 until 12:30
Venue: Jungle Amsterdam, Tweede van Swindenstraat 26, Amsterdam
