The Alexander Technique for Musicians

A 3-Hour Intro Workshop in NYC

 Day: Saturday, March 29th, 2025

Time: 10:00am – 1:00pm;
(Optional Afternoon Session is 3:00pm – 6:00pm)

Where: OPERA American Studios (330 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001)

For: Musicians, Music Educators & Alexander Technique Teachers

 Instructor: Jeremy Chance

Workshop Fee: $95
(Add afternoon session for an additional $50)

20 14 spots available.

Dear Fellow Performing Artist, 

MBMS Director Peter Jacobson here.

I'm delighted to invite you to this 3-hour intro workshop for musicians (with the option of adding a 3-hour afternoon session) featuring special guest teacher Jeremy Chance (scroll down for bio). 

Jeremy is my former mentor, friend and a world-renowned teacher of the Alexander Technique. 

Over his long and storied career, Jeremy has helped countless musicians improve the quality of their artistic expression through his work.  Jeremy's teaching is dynamic, engaging and fun. 

Here's Jeremy's description of the workshop:  

Five Notes to Play You

You are your instrument - how you play you will calibrate the quality of the sound you produce. Whether you play an instrument or sing, certain physical truths shape the way you call your art into being.

FM Alexander’s discovery was that we have a binary motor control system, and the more important of the two is our Postural Movement System (PMS) which optimizes all our general movements. The design of our postural movement spans 500 million years of evolution, and there’s nothing you can do to improve it.

In fact, trying to improve PMS is part of the problem.

In this workshop, Jeremy will introduce five key “notes” that you play to call upon the best of your postural system. These five “notes” are in the form of universal movements of large parts of you around specific joints - these movements are always in the same direction and underlie the way you play music.

Right now, if you have pains and discomfort and can’t break through a certain standard of playing, it means you are not aware of the inherent design of your PMS. Yes, suppressing, distorting, and misaligning your postural system is entirely possible.

The easiest way to study is to rediscover how to sequence these five “notes” in the order they are designed to be played. Every toddler does this without prompting; however, this innocent understanding is lost over time. Slowly, you start playing them out of order, or miss one of the crucial notes - or you are playing some of them too heavily without considering the harmony of the whole.

Although we have five “notes” - they are not the music.

Every musician goes through the slow process of identifying notes, chords, rhythms, and melodies until integration is finally achieved. It is a similar pathway with your postural movements - you start with individual notes (movements around joints), then learn how they work together to produce connections (chords), and then on to finer motor control (like rhymes & melodies) until finally, PMS is integrated with your playing.

WHAT HAPPENS AT THE WORKSHOP

From the start, you will explore making sounds. This workshop applies Alexander's discovery to the making of music. One of the first steps is to clarify the movement plan you need to produce music - can you describe that accurately?

While you can add all kinds of different movements - for emphasis, personality, and expression - there is also a precise way to produce a sound. For example, Elton John and Arthur Rubinstein use very different movements to play the piano - yet they both produce sound that is loved. However, Rubinstein is like a gold standard - he only does what is necessary and leaves other expressions alone. With Elton John - we see lots of expressive movements as well as the playing!

Your sound will change along with your postural movement - giving you the sensory feedback needed to develop your own way of playing. You don’t have to change how you play, but you do need to know what is essential. Are you adding extra movements?

Perhaps you don’t even know - come along and find out…

HOW TO PREPARE

Everyone attending is asked to bring one piece to explore. Choose a piece you are familiar with - you need your mind power to start playing with the five “notes” within your music-making.

Those who stay for the afternoon will be able to explore their piece - seeing how Alexander's Discovery can amplify the abilities you already have.

Come along and explore!

We warmly welcome musicians and music educators with no experience in the Alexander Technique as well as those already familiar with the work, including Alexander Technique teacher-trainees and teachers. 

The Alexander Technique has been used by thousands of performing artists for well over a century. 

I hope you'll join us and count yourself among them. 

In Music,
Peter Jacobson
MBMS Founder & Director

PS – To make the workshop accessible to all, we are offering need-based scholarships. Send me an email to request an application.

Jeremy Chance

Jeremy Chance has been studying Alexander’s discoveries since 1969.

His book Principles of the Alexander Technique has been published and translated into 7 languages. Jeremy originally trained in London during the 1970s and continued his studies with Marjorie Barstow in the 1980s. From 1985 to 2002 he was the Publisher & Editor of DIRECTION, a Journal on the Alexander Technique. He was a founding member of AUSTAT in Australia and is currently a member of no Alexander organisations or societies. In 1999 Jeremy married and moved to Japan where he founded an Alexander Training School. In 2023 he sold his school – BodyChance - to Zen Place, a Japanese corporation specializing in Pilates & Yoga education in over 130 Studios in Japan. Jeremy accepted a 5-year contract to continue as BodyChance’s Director in Tokyo and Osaka.

Read Jeremy's full bio here.