Thanks to Lyon Conservatoire, Pierre Hamon and Erasmus+, I have had the honor to be a guest teacher there this week, and it was such an experience! (Cold too, by the way, we were just around 2 ºC.) 

In all France there is only one conservatory of higher education where the recorder is taught, so very few enter. The level of these fantastic young musicians is impressive, and I can’t wait to see their developments in the musical world! We worked on posture and gravity in the body, where the energy can get stuck in the body when we play, the tongue and what to do when it’s too noisy, study routines, but also about diminution in consort playing, ornamentation in 17th century airs de cour, Händel and his particular musical language, and much more. This year I'm brushing up my German and French with really fantastic classes at the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas (they have Official Language Schools in Spain, which is so awesome!!), so it was a great opportunity to communicate in French as well. And I met up with Pierre Hamon too, which was lovely! 

Our CD can be purchased here on the lobke.world, and now it's also on music platforms like Spotify, iTunes etc!

It was a real pleasure to play Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto IV for solo violin, 2 recorders and orchestra at the National Auditorium in Madrid! One of the most special concerts I’ve had these months!

We performed our program “Music for a while” for a very enthusiastic audience in November 2022!

Article number 2! :)

Here is the link to the English version of the article on their website:

https://www.windkanal.de/startseite/articles-in-english

I’m very glad to share with you that the American Recorder Society has published my article on the technique of using the air in their Spring 2021 magazine, vol. LXII, no.1 !

My article on coordination between air, fingers and articulation is published by The Recorder Magazine!

To encourage and help by giving useful information in these difficult times, I decided to create these 10 episodes, which are now on my YouTube channel! You can find them in this gallery as well :)

Seeing that quarantine was about to arrive, at 35º C, we rented a house near the coast (the beaches and national parks have been closed all this time), in a neighbourhood where this singer-songwriter also lives. We get together to make music, I improvise on his songs, and once a week we play live on Facebook. I love modern music and I want to do it more often!

In this impressive church we were received with great enthusiasm by a wonderful audience!

With the title “Enigmas of Music” we address a highly varied but connected repertoire for one reason: the enigma hosted by the music of each of the three parts.

I gladly shared the stage with these wonderful musicians!

By kindness of Mónica López Lau I was invited as a guest teacher for a course of 3 days at the Escuela Superior de Música for all recorder students from official degrees. Within this course we not only worked on the technique and repertoire of the flute, but also on relaxation and preparation techniques before going on stage.

A life-long dream came true… And I never expected this trick!! A fantastic day :)

(Chocolate porridge)

Oaxaca (Mexico)

Half a year before this image would turn into normality, I was with a normal flu.

(Querétaro)

Querétaro - Patio Barroco

These are some impressions of the Viewpoints session I did with the musicians!

For two hours I gave a conference, concert and open class, talking about the different recorders, concepts of Early Music, ornaments, the relationship of historical dance and music, and the musician's body.

The conference also included an open class in Early Music - in this case a work by Bach.

Another theme of this introduction to Early Music at my conference at the Municipal Center of the Arts in Mazatlan, Mexico.

The musicians of Bartholomew Faire and I had the best meet-up ever! Trying out different Medieval pieces and lots of improvising!

I had the honor of being the guest teacher of the Desert Pipes meeting in Phoenix, as well as giving several individual classes!

Another shot from the Phoenix recorder ensemble session 😄 This one was secretly made by a fantastic lady of 83 who still jumped out of an airplane 3 years ago, does yoga and was filming when she should be playing 😂😂😂 I’m aiming to be the same at that age!! 😃🎶 That’s my arrangement of Yann Tiersen’s La Redecouverte (from the movie Amélie) - awesome for recorder ensemble!

These days I was invited as a guest teacher to lead the ensemble, working on how to do a good warming-up, tuning, other technical matters of the recorder - and all of this through a wonderful madrigal of Cipriano de Rore and La Redecouverte by Yann Tiersen.

Here are some shots of my work in Death Valley - an experimentation of the body with the natural elements that were there. The temperature was around 40 ºC and the ground was uneven and slippery, which was a very interesting challenge.

Yosemite

and their shadows

From Seattle on, we are travelling to Yellowstone, Salt Lake, Grand Canyon and perhaps Los Angeles, before going south to Mexico at the end of October.

Would you like to have a free Masterclass too? Contact me!

Here I am in the break of an entire morning of giving Viewpoints class to Drama and Dance students at Barter Island High School in Seattle, and HAPPY!

I first work on a warming-up that suits the level of the students, where they already start listening to the body, the space and the sounds. Here we also introduce reacting to the others around us.

Then we start improvising in the space, playing with the basic elements of tempo, duration, repetition and contrast. We keep adding elements, without losing this close listening of the body to the space and to others. What emerges is a fun time for students and some really beautiful visual and theatrical situations that just emerge naturally! One student told me how she had been “in her head” the entire morning at school, and that the Viewpoints allowed her to come out of it and just BE.

This is an ideal way of group working, where students connect with themselves and the others in a very organic and FUN way! It’s for actors, musicians, dancers, but also team building for any branch!

Are you interested in a Viewpoints training or would you like to know more? Contact me!

An incredible opportunity is that Pacific Northwest Ballet offers open classes twice a day. The level is indicated as intermediate, and thought the steps are that level, the tempo is very high and so is the general level of the students. I would rather say it’s intermediate-advanced. I was very excited to take a class here!

They have beautiful large studios that tend to fill up in class, which is awesome. It was a great experience!

It was just the sea and the 200 of us,

while the moon was watching.

Landscapes that seem to be floating in a mysterious world…

Glaciers make bridges, they break, they melt, they freeze again.

There are places where you can see how far away the bottom is.

And they look so innocent.

Just a selfie full of happiness.

A book stand in an isolated native village in the extreme north of Alaska. This place is harsh, yet I’ve never seen such a united community.

Sometimes travelling back in time is travelling within oneself…

Beauty is in so many places…

It’s in colors, forms, textures.

What do you find beautiful in this image?

The world changes according your viewpoint.

We all look from a different point.

We are all worlds ourselves.

Under the water

there is another world

Seemingly ours

but twisted

in ways we can only imagine

The Niagara Falls impress, especially from below, when we silently stay in awe before such a huge work of nature.

These form a part of the largest rainbow flag in the world!

The journey has begun. My sleepless brain can’t hold on to any thought, but my eye is drawn to the conjunction point of all the lines in this curious tunnel at the airport, while Joachim asks himself the question everybody seems to ask while on a trip with me: “Where is Lobke?”