The ‘Feral Choir’ project involves a series of vocal workshops with amateurs, which concludes with a public performance. The beginning of the project date back to the late 1980s, to a workshop held for non-singers at the Music Centre in Stockholm. The success it made then contributed to the further development of the idea of a feral, untamed, wild choir. Based on his extensive experience the workshop leader has come to believe that human voice is capable of much more than is generally taken as its meaning. The participants are encouraged to understand that everyone who can breathe is capable of producing sounds of a positive aesthetic connotation which neither depend on nor refer to any cultural patterns. 

The three-day workshop is open for anyone who loves the freedom of experiment, not only singers. The workshop focuses on exploration of vocal abilities through exercises and improvisations crowned with a concert. It starts with laughter as a non-verbal vocal technique, which uses voice in a spontaneous, inventive and sometimes extreme way.    

‘Feral Choir’ has been realised in a number of countries such as Germany, Great Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, Latin America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, with participation of professionals, singers and actors, as well as amateurs.

Number of participants is limited to 40.

Phil Minton comes from Torquay. He played trumpet and sang with the Mike Westbrook Band in the early 60’s, then in dance and rock bands in Europe for the later of part of the decade. He returned to England in 1971, rejoining Westbrook and was involved in many of his projects until the mid 1980’s.

For most of the last forty years, Minton has been working as an improvising singer many groups, orchestras, and situations, all over the place. Numerous composers have written music especially for his extended vocal techniques. He has a quartet with Veryan Weston, Roger Turner and John Butcher, and ongoing duos, trios and quartets with the above and many other musicians.

Since the eighties, his Feral Choir, where he conducts voice workshops and concerts for anyone who wants to sing, has performed in over twenty countries.

http://www.philmintonsferalchoir.com/feralchoir.html