The Map of Music is Filling Out and the Boundaries are being Redrawn.

Music from the East is turning up in the West, whilst Medieval, Contemporary and World Musics are now fundamental parts of our contemporary soundscape.



Just as significantly, new vocational pathways have opened up -
such as community musicing and music therapy.
Consequently, the old maps of music (e.g. Western Music Theory)
no longer fully help us find our way through today's musical diversity.

Tonalis is therefore dedicated to bringing to attention all the exciting discoveries
that have amended the map of music during the last 50 years.


Tonalis has a growing reputation for the way it is enabling its participants
to give voice to the new world of music and the new life which will characterise the C21st

We believe that
The NEW WORLD cannot be created with OLD TOOLS
and that,


If you are interested in forms of music making emerging in
response to the deepest needs of our time
then Take a Closer Look at What Tonalis has to Offer.
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Clearly, music has spiritual dimensions that go beyond the physical realm of sensory awareness.
Yet, today’s modern scientific worldview, traditional music trainings, and our secularised culture
tends to exclude such holistic and metaphysical perspectives from music training.

Inter-Disciplinary Perspectives
Just as music in the Middle Ages penetrated the fabric of all other disciplines from theology to mathematics,
so Tonalis today is bringing about a NEW MARRIAGE IN MUSIC of:
Musicology History Philosophy Psychology Sociology
Spirituality and Therapeutic Perspectives in Music.
Thus you will find all our work is informed by the latest Scientific Research in music,
as well as being strongly experiential, practical and creative. In short, IT IS HOLISTIC.

Our Holistic Vision Includes:

from Music in the Soundscape Sacred Spaces Community Contexts.




With Tonalis you experience the wonder and fullness of music,
not music reduced to the partial perspective of particular styles or cultures.
Thus our teaching/performing is not bound by the walls of any one tradition.
Instead we celebrate the way the Whole Earth makes music.

Tonalis Community Music Trainee practising Tablas		 Masai woman singing
     
Man and Soul


The continuous melody of our inner life accompanies everything we do.
However, the tendency in modern music teaching to focus on sight reading
and technical mastery at the expense of improvisation, etc.
has disconnected many students from working on their
emotional intelligence, creative imagination and inner musician skills.

Our courses therefore help you

so that


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We invite you to stand back from modern music education and ask:
are we addressing the whole human being in music learning - body, soul, mind and spirit - and
are we bringing about a ‘Harmony of the Hemispheres’ in all our musicing via processes that integrate
our right and left brains?
We have thus created innovative and holistic Visual, Aural, Kinaesthetic and Creative teaching methods.


We believe that the development of student’s creative musical imagination through
composition and improvisation should not be add-ons, but should be central to Music Education.
With Tonalis, therefore, composition and co-creating music by ear in improvisation
- instead of relying on the 'visual guided tours' provided by music notation -
are not just occasional freedoms, but represent a whole approach to the Creation and Performance of Music
     
Michael Deason-Barrow plays Double Bowed Psaltery in Soundscape Improvisation in Barbara Hepworth Garden (with permission from Tate Gallery, St. Ives)          Pentatonic Tone Harp in Soundscape Improvisation in Barbara Hepworth Garden, (with permission from Tate Gallery, St.Ives).
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There is a growing awareness of the gap between
i) music in community contexts and music in the concert hall, and
ii) the informal and formal music education providers.


Tonalis, you will find, works in the Space Between:
        Western and World Musics
        Literate and Oral Cultures
        Specialist, Generalist and Community Musicians.


Thus a key goal of ours is to create a meeting place for musicians
so that they can:
i) learn and benefit from working with each other and
ii) move freely between different roles in music.        
For instance, Tonalis trains:
Community Musicians to Work in Schools,
Singers to become Voice Therapists,
and Music Teachers to work in Special Needs Contexts, etc.
            Through having such a Wider Vision of Music we thus provide
                  

Above all, Tonalis provides
In particular, we are becoming increasingly well known and respected for
opening doors into new and previously hidden career pathways,
e.g.

Music Teachers (for Out of School Music Clubs, Preschool Children & Toddlers)
Voice Animateurs (e.g. for Singing in Schools and Uncertain Singers)
Composers of Music for Children and Community Music Groups
Choir Leaders for Seniors and Inter-Generational Choirs
Youth Choir Leaders
Singing Therapists
Community Musicians
Musicians in the Workplace
Sacred Music Animateurs
Soundscape Designers

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