Music is powerful – fun and humorous as well as compassionate and spiritually healing. Thank you for stretching the muscles of my boundary of definition of music and musical creativity. A GOOD workout for my mind-body-and-soul. And the wonderful synergy of the loving and daring music healers that I spent a week with! Thank you all for the creative wisdom and musical wit shared.

I found the training, extremely well paced, very thorough, and really useful.  With 360 degree teaching that built layer upon layer, with ever new depth and understanding as the week went on. Many thanks to the excellent facilitators, organisers for holding the space for us all with great care and integrity, and to all of the other participants for such a rich and invaluable experience. Big thumbs up for Akoesticum, what a beautiful environment to work rest and play in.

I am still in awe at how much we have done and learnt in such little time. This training has given me so much, both on a professional and personal level, and I will carry the knowledge I gained everywhere I go. My advice to anyone who is thinking of doing it – go with an open mind and heart and with a thirst to learn and grow.

To break it down:

“Musicians Without Borders uses the power of music to connect communities, bridge divides, and heal the wounds of war and conflict.”  This is the basic statement that inspired all of us to apply, and the participants selected (from all around the world) turned out to be the most compassionate, talented, and energetic music people one could possibly imagine!  The content was very well thought out from the beginning, and was also adjusted throughout the event to reflect the ongoing dynamics.  The result was a living collective organism undergoing rapid and joyous growth towards individual and group empowerment.   The presenters brought deep experience, proven skills, and an openness of spirit that testified in every way to the integrity of the organization and its purpose. I have every expectation that the human relationships created in these amazing five days will continue to support and delight me for a lifetime.

It was also delivered by dedicated workshop leaders with a variety of styles and approaches combining theory and practice, listening and doing. They gave us so much to think about! I’m really excited to imagine all the ways I can bring what I learned from MwB into my own work with conflict and community music.

I found that while working in (music) education and peace building, my emotional and pedagogical tools begin to show their wear and tear over time. I have participated in other projects with MWB that have helped to restock some of the tools needed so that I may continue working in this field. I firmly believe that I need to understand what I am using, how I am using it and where it came from. The ‘Training of Trainers’ allowed me to walk into the woods, plant the seeds, cultivate the growth and reshape the tools I can pass on to others the way some were passed onto to me. This was an opportunity for me to share as much as it was to learn and everything I do from this point on will benefit from it.

A perfectly balanced program that includes both theory and practice. For my work, I am sure it will help spread the ideas to my country, Ukraine, that is currently also in conflict as well as develop our work with Syrian refugee children and adults in the framework of our ongoing project Global Week for Syria. Empower, trust, create, connect, dare, inspire, shine and lead – this is what the training is all about.

Understanding more and more about teaching profoundly in conflict zones. Meeting all these great musicians from all over the world. Talking, sharing ideas and creativity, jamming. A big hurrah and chapeau to Musicians without Borders for organising this first training with all these experienced and wonderful trainers who already dare to work in conflict areas! Very inspiring!!

Eva-Maria Westbroek studied at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague from 1988 to 1995. Her vocal teachers included Iris Adami Corradetti and the American tenor James McCray. She made her operatic debut at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1994 as Mère Marie in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites. She was a prize winner at an international competition in Rome, which allowed her to sing the role of Tosca at age 25. She also was a laureate at the Angelica Catalani Concours and the Santa Maria Ligure Concours.

In 2001, Westbroek secured a 5-year contract as a company member of the Staatsoper Stuttgart. Her roles in Stuttgart included Carlotta (Schreker, Die Gezeichneten), Tosca, Emilia Marty (Janáček, Věc Makropulos, Desdemona (Verdi, Otello), Donna Anna (Mozart, Don Giovanni), Giulietta (Offenbach, Les Contes d’Hoffmann), Marie (Smetana, The Bartered Bride) and The Duchess of Parma (Busoni, Doktor Faust). In 2006, at the end of her work in Stuttgart, she was given the title of Kammersängerin der Staatsoper Stuttgart.

In 2003, Westbroek debuted at the Salzburger Festspiele as Agave in a concert performance of Egon Wellesz’ Die Bakchantinnen. In 2004, she debuted at the Opéra Bastille as Madame Lidoine in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites. Her debut at De Nederlandse Opera was as Katerina Izmailova in Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. This performance was commercially recorded for DVD release, and Westbroek won first prize from the Dutch VSCD Classical Music in the category “most impressive individual artistic achievement” for this performance. She repeated this role in her debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London in October 2006. In 2008, she won the Grand Prix Antoine Livio of the Presse Musicale Internationale.

In her first world premiere production, Westbroek created the role of Anna Nicole Smith in the February 2011 Royal Opera premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s opera Anna Nicole at Covent Garden.

Westbroek made her Metropolitan Opera debut on April 22, 2011 singing the role of Sieglinde in the premiere of a new production of Wagner’s “Die Walküre” directed by Robert Lapage.

Westbroek’s commercial recordings include Bohuslav Martinu’s Julietta, in the title role, for VMS Music Treasures, and three productions of Wagner’s Die Walküre as Sieglinde with Bayreuth, Frankfurt, and Aix en Provence on CD and DVD. She is also featured in a DVD recording (Opus Arte) of Puccini’s La fanciulla del West as Minnie, her own acknowledged favourite role.

Other recentlly released DVDs include Anna Nicole, Elektra from Strauss at the Salzburger festspiele 2010 and the role of Georgetta in il Tabarro in Puccini’s Trittico.

Shura Lipovsky was born in The Hague (Netherlands) and is a highly valued performer of Yiddish song on the international stage. Writer and composer of new Yiddish songs, she appears worldwide as a singer and storyteller.

Shura Lipovsky studied singing with Margreet Honig at the Rotterdam Conservatory, the Yiddish language with Mira Rafalowicz, at the Oxford Summer-University and in Maison de la Culture Yiddish (MCY) in Paris.

Lipovsky finished a dance education at the Dutch institute for international folk dance (LCA), and in 2005/06 she studied at l’Ecole Internationale de Théâtre de Jacques Lecoq in Paris.

She studied Cabalistic concepts with several teachers in Europe and the United States.

Performer

Shura Lipovsky performed in Europe, Scandinavia, Israel, Russia, the United States and Canada.

Highlights of her career:

Lipovsky gave the Commemoration Concert of the 50th Anniversary of the Ghetto Uprising in Warsaw Philharmonia (1993).

She participated in the Klezmer Extravaganza with Yitskhak Perlman in New York (1996), opened in 2002 the International Jewish Music festival in Amsterdam with her ensemble ‘Yiddishe Veltn’ (Monique Lansdorp, Bart Lelivelt a.o.) and in 2009 performed in Carnegy Hall with her quartet ‘Serendipity 4’ (Theodore Bikel, Tamara Brooks and Merima Kljuco).

For the LIza Ferschtman Chamber Music festival in Delft, Lipovsky gave a concert with pianist Jacques Verheyen, which was life broadcast on radio 4, Dutch National Radio, in 2009.

In 2011 Shura Lipovsky premiered with her new ensemble ‘Novaya Shira’ in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. The concert was sold out and received with great success.

Her Hassidic story-program ‘Outside of Eden’ was performed in Europe, Sweden and the United States, accompanied by accordionist Bart Lelivelt and later by pianist Tamir Chasson. The stories were alternatively told in Dutch, English, German or Yiddish.

Pedagogue

Shura Lipovsky teaches masterclasses for professional singers, workshops on Yiddish song repertoire and she developed a model of Hassidic teachings and Kabbalah, ‘The Meditative Voice’: Jewish mystical melodies, meditation and movement.

She taught at the International Jewish Music Competition in Amsterdam, at MCY- Bibliothèque Medem in Paris, the Oxford Summer University, Summer-University in Vilna, Yiddish in Stockholm, at Klezfests in St. Petersburg, KlezKanada, London, Weimar and Paris. She taught ‘Meditative Voice’ at the Center for Jewish spirituality Elat Chayyim in New York, the Zentrum für Bewegung & Bewustsein’ in Portugal and in various other spiritual centers in Europe.

For the last seven years she has been the artistic director of the Jewish Summer Song-School in London for the Jewish Music Institute (JMI).

Since 2005 Shura Lipovsky has a choir for Yiddish songs in MCY-Bibliothèque Medem.

In 2008 and 2012 she was a member of the jury for the International Jewish Music Competition in Amsterdam.

Peaceworker

By means of singing, dancing and storytelling, Shura Lipovsky is active in inter-religious dialogue and she is a member of Musicians without Borders (MwB), located in the Netherlands.

She worked with spiritual leaders of different religions, such as the German priest and Zen-Master Willigis Jaeger (Benediktushof, Holzkirchen), Sheich Bashir Ahmad Dultz (Moslim Liga, Bonn) and the Sufi-master Ingo Taleb Rashid from Irak.

In 2003 Shura Lipovsky taught Jewish mystical melodies, nigunim in Sarajevo to the inter-religious choir Pontanima, collaborating with choral conductor and director of MwB, Laura Hassler.

In 2004 she produced a Jewish/Bosnian song-program in collaboration with Musicians Without Borders and performed with the intercultural Mostar Sinfonietta. For this project she invited Bosnian accordionist Merima Kljuco to participate and the American guest conductor Tamara Brooks to conduct for the occasion of the Second International Conference of Musicians Without Borders in Utrecht 2004, ‘Singing the Bridge’.

In 2005 the American singer/actor Theodore Bikel joined the project, while it toured through Poland under its new name: ‘Bridge to Peace’ in June 2005. The Dutch journalist Rob Simons produced the documentary, ‘Bridge to Peace’ in 2005.

Shura Lipovsky produced several cd’s (Moments of Jewish Life, Heroes and Poets’ and ‘Tsart. Her new CD ‘Vaytinke’ has been presented in December 2013).

She was featured in Dutch, Belgian, American and Canadian documentaries (‘Jiddisj is mijn instrument’, ‘Terpe Kind Mains, Terpe’, ‘Yiddish Soul’, ‘Journey 4 Artists’, ‘Wandering Muse’).

Fearless Rose is an Amsterdam-based vocal ensemble that sings on behalf of Musicians without Borders at conferences, festivals and music projects. The “roses” are singers, choral conductors and workshop leaders whose repertoire covers music from all corners of the world, celebrating the diversity and the power of the human voice. For bookings and inquiries, contact: [email protected]

Matthew Wadsworth is a Lute virtuoso in great demand, having performed all over the world at major festivals as a soloist as well as with specialist early music ensembles, and his six CDs to date have received international acclaim.

Matthew studied at the Royal Academy of Music, and in 1997 he won the London Student of the Year award for his work on the development of braille Lute tablature. Matthew was also the first blind student to attend Chethams school of Music in Manchester.

Matthew also made an attempt at the record jump on a motorcross-bike for a blind person, and a film was made about him and his attempt at breaking the record.

Helen Botman (1973) has been a professional singer for almost 25 years. She is a conservatory trained vocalist, having studied under internationally renowned singers Rhiannon, Denise Jannah and Jonathan Hart Makwaia (Roy Hart Theatre, NYC). Helen has sung on behalf of Musicians without Borders with former ‘a capella’ ensemble Lélé Mam in America, Hungary, Germany and Turkey, as well as in MwB projects in refugee camps in Bosnia and Palestine. Her current single, People, was written in response to the current refugee crisis. All proceeds from the single will go to support Musicians without Borders.