Featured Artists Mauricio Velasierra
Mauricio is a multi-instrumentalist and instrument designer, who specialises in Andean wind instruments. The Kena, Sikus and Mohoseños (up to 2 metre long duct flutes) are his main instruments, but he also doubles as a percussionist and has explored west African, south African and Cuban music mainly through the congas and the Bombo.
Mauricio has also worked extensible as a musician and composer collaborating with musicians such as John Williams and Zoe Rahman, he currently leads his own quintet, and has recently released his latest album “Rodar”, he passionately believes that in order to teach and share music it is important to be a demanding professional in the field.
Mauricio is also deeply interested in the educational power of music and has been involved with Superact since its foundation, with a total of 11 years of experience in the field. After working extensible in developing a wide range of workshops, programmes and projects with the community: Schools (Special needs and others), prisons, hospitals and homes for the elderly, he has helped in the development of Superact’s current qualification ‘SEPE’ and the international project ‘PEETA’.
He is currently a lead trainer for Superact covering basic workshop skills and advanced SEPE programme development.
As the only accredited specialist in the UK of South American instrument research, Velez is an accomplished instrument maker. He also conducts workshops on the making and performance of the Kenas and Sikus pan pipes.
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www.mvelasierra.com
Iwan Kushka
Iwan Kushka - Musician, Storyteller, Bard extraordinaire
Combining engaging storytelling with great musicianship, Iwan has been bringing his bag of tricks into schools, hospitals, nursing homes and stages across the South West.
With an extensive repertoire of stories from all over the world, there’s always something suited for any particular audience. A typical session will involve audience participation and lots of laughter, wonder and sense of togetherness…
He accompanies himself on guitar, frame drum, flutes, ukulele, thumb-piano and many more beautiful and rare instruments.
“A truly magical and unique combination of story and song!”
“ Something really different and enlivening! Residents were talking about the stories for days…” Cherryl, Chelston Park , Wellington.
To download the full biog click here.
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Reaching out to the audience
The artists who take Superact!’s programmes and initiatives out to our audiences play a pivotal role in how well we deliver the various initiatives entrusted to us. They are skilled professionals and we expect a high standard of engagement from them.
We use a number of artistic approaches covering many aspects of the arts. Although Superact! has traditionally been a music oriented organisation using a plethora of musical styles and cultural influences, we are increasingly employing other skills such as drama, storytelling and poetry.
Used well, these skill-sets can be powerful tools with which to break down the difficult barriers associated with, for instance, dementia and preventing criminal re-offending.
Our audiences come from backgrounds that often cause them to have a poor ability to communicate or express themselves that can be hugely frustrating and destructive in their everyday lives.
This means that as well and being experienced professionals in their particular artistic field, Superact! artists, have to be extremely good communicators in their own right. An innate ability to reach out and quickly integrate with an audience (where possible on a one to one basis) is every bit as important as their professional artistic background and is they key to providing the maximum benefit from a particular activity.
To help in this regard, Superact also organises workshops designed to help artists understand and work with the abilities of specific audience groups.
