Singing Saturdays with Ragnar Bohlin
April: Verdi!
An online choral workshop featuring Verdi Requiem
and selected opera choruses.
Three Saturday sessions: Apr. 10, 17, and 24
SF Symphony Chorus Director Ragnar Bohlin will join us from his home in Sweden for a three-session series to hone your choral singing skills. We'll gather for healthy vocal warm-ups and then explore some of your favorites from the choral repertoire.
Each session is a 75-minute-long exploration of techniques that will make selected passages from a great choral work beautiful and musical. Although they are not choral rehearsals as such, they will include interludes of singing together through parts and movements of the pieces being studied.
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Don't let staying at home stop you from improving your music skills! Amateur Music Network online workshops bring master musicians into your home to share their knowledge and expertise.
All you need to participate is a computer or other device connected to the internet. All registered participants will receive a Zoom link on the day of the workshop.
To learn more about the workshop, visit the Workshop Information Page.
Admission to each session is $25. You may opt to attend all three sessions by subscribing to the series for $60.
No one is turned away for lack of funds! Contact [email protected] to request a reduction of the fee.
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As Chorus Director for the San Francisco Symphony since 2007, Ragnar Bohlin has prepared the SFS Chorus for some of the world’s greatest conductors, including Michael Tilson Thomas, Herbert Blomstedt, Charles Dutoit, Valery Gergiev, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Alan Gilbert. He has also conducted the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus in such pieces as Orff’s Carmina Burana, Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Mass in B Minor, and Poulenc’s Figure Humaine. His outstanding work has been recognized with a Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance for Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. Bohlin has been invited to appear as guest conductor with orchestras and choirs worldwide. He has made many guest appearances with the Swedish Radio Choir, recording two CDs with them and touring the US to great critical acclaim. He has been guest conductor with Chanticleer, the BBC Singers, Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, Royal Philharmonic Choir, Opera Chorus of Stockholm and Formosa Singers of Taiwan, among many others. Orchestral conducting appearances have been with symphonies in São Paulo, Edmonton, Helsingborg, Stavanger Madrid, Shanghai and Malmö.In 2014 he founded the San Francisco based 24-voice professional chamber choir Cappella SF, with whom he has made four professional recordings and premiered over ten new choral works.
Bohlin teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, has taught at the Royal Academy in Stockholm, and was a 2008 visiting professor at Indiana University. He has been awarded the prestigious Johannes Norrby Award for expanding the frontiers of Swedish choral music-making and Chorus America’s Michael Korn Award for the Development of the Professional Choral Art. Conducting studies were with the renowned choir director Eric Ericson, piano with Peter Feuchtwanger in London and voice with the great Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda. He has also appeared as an oratorio tenor.