Loire

Teaching Topics and Philosophy

Your Rhythm, You Life: Pulse Tools for the Total Vocalist *Instrumentalists welcomed Discover the awesome rhythmic power of your voice, strengthen your intuitive connection to pulse, fine-tune your time awareness and expand your musical creativity and vocal improvisations.

Musical Topics:
▪ Vocal Improvisation Techniques using Drum language and Jazz Scat
▪ Konnakol – South Indian Vocal Percussion
▪ Tala’s (time cycles) – Clapping Patterns from India
▪ Embodying rhythmic syncopations through simple body movements
▪ Chant meditations to synchronize pulse and breath

Wellness topics:
▪ Performance anxiety
▪ Inner critic
▪ Exercise and nutrition
▪ Touring and ‘on the road’ wellness

* Loire holds a Masters degree in Music Therapy from NYU and has extensive clinical experience in the field as a certified music therapist.

Biography

“Astonishing” (Chicago Tribune) … “Jaw-dropping dexterity” (Chicago Classical Review) … “Acrobatic vocals” (Financial Times) … “Rapid-fire articulation” (Chicago Classical Review) … “Phenomenal” (De Volksrant) …“Explosive…buoyant” (The New York Times) “Impossibly breakneck speed…peerless artistry” (The Jerusalem Post) are words frequently used to praise the vocal magic of LOIRE.

Described by The New Yorker as “Using her voice in mystically percussive ways” LOIRE sings in a universal language that is accessible to all, yet super-human in its capacity to deliver the unimaginable. Using exotic rhythms as her muse she is able to execute with the human voice phrases that do not seem possible in their rhythmic speed and clarity. LOIRE’s unusual artistry creates a synthesis of world stylings, jazz scat, pop, melismatic improvisations, along with her original reworking of the highly sophisticated and rare vocal art of Konnakol (South Indian drum language). “You just drop your jaw. You can’t believe the human voice can do this kind of improvisation,” says Eugene Friesen, Grammy award winning Cellist and Professor of strings and Improvisation, Berklee College of Music.

LOIRE (born Lori Cotler in New York City) was recognized at an early age for her innate musical talents. She began formal music training in the Suzuki method at age six and by eleven was already composing instrumental songs on the piano. During her teenage years, she attended a full-time gifted magnet school for the arts, Long Island High School for the Performing Arts. It was there that she fell in love with Jazz and met her mentor, Dave Burns, renown trumpeter with such luminaries as Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, James Moody and Thelonius Monk. Burns recognized LOIRE’s aptitude for scat singing and be-bop which similar to Konnakol, demands the vocal reproduction of complex and often up-tempo instrumental material. LOIRE’s expansion into Konnakol is just the latest manifestation of her long-standing devotion to the possibility of singing wordless, vocal articulations and rhythmic play. She contributes much of her rhythmic approach and Konnakol studies to her collaboration (2002–present) with the legendary four-time Grammy award winning master percussionist and composer Glen Velez. She has also studied Konnakol with ghatam and Konnakol master Subash Chandran and briefly with the mrdangam master Vinod (VR) Venkataram.

In addition to her illustrious music career, she holds a Master degree from NYU in Music Therapy. She was a Professor of Music Therapy at New School University (2001 – 2007) and worked extensively in hospitals and clinics around NYC. LOIRE’s innovative rhythmic and therapeutic approach to the voice has led her to teach at prestigious universities and conservatories around the world, including the Janacek Academy of Music (Czech Republic), Berklee College of Music and regular Master Classes at the Juilliard School, among many others. She is currently lending her talents for charity work in support of Sounding Joy Music Therapy in the USA and Japan. LOIRE has recently released the first drum language ringtone for iPhone called TAKA MOSHI for which all proceeds go towards Sounding Joy Music Therapy.

LOIRE is currently starring in THE NEWS: a reality opera by award-wining avant pop composer JacobTV (Jacob Ter Veldhuis), a role he composed specifically around LOIRE’s wide-ranging techniques and improvisational stylings. Her performances and the opera itself have been generating sold-out audiences and rave reviews, including a 5 star rating in the premiere Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. The Nationale ReisOpera Company with the Netherlands Blazers Ensemble will be producing the European tour in 2014-15. The Metropolitan Museum of Art with Alarm Will Sound ensemble will present the NYC premiere of THE NEWS April 2015.

LOIRE maintains an international touring schedule with Glen Velez in his ensemble Glen Velez TA KA DI MI, singing Velez’s groundbreaking percussion compositions, such as Tel Halaf (video sample), a seminal Glen Velez Frame Drum ensemble composition which uses the ideas of Indonesian style hocketing (Kotekan), South Indian Drum Language (Konnakol) and lightning fast cuing to dramatic effect. Velez arranged this piece especially for LOIRE, the only vocalist who dared to tackle it. LOIRE has multiple recordings with Glen Velez on Sounds True and Daftof.

LOIRE’s emotionally-charged melodic invention, genre-bending dexterity and sensual stage presence has led to numerous collaborations with world-class musicians and modern dance companies. Her signature sound has been used on documentaries, film, dance scores and television commercials with companies such as Tiffany & Co. and CVS. She has been a featured soloist in live performances with Bridgman/Packer Dance, Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, Alison Chase Apogee Arts (co-founder of Pilobolus) and Axiom Ensemble of Juilliard. Her collaboration with award winning composer Edward Bilous, includes multimedia performances of Night of the Dark Moon, playing a Theremin Controller and Lucid Dreams with film installation of Pilobolus dancers. LOIRE has collaborated with Basque music icon Kepa Junkera, singing in Basque on his recordings. She has been a featured soloist with in sold-out performances with the Taipei Chinese Orchestra and in 2012 with the National Chinese Orchestra at the National Concert Hall in Taipei. In 2012, she was the featured soloist with the American Composer’s Orchestra in Milica Paranosic’s world premiere of The Tiger’s Wife (prologue) at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall.

Her touring schedule has brought her to such far-reaching destinations as Japan, Taiwan, Mexico, Israel, Brazil, Italy, Alaska, Portugal, France, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Spain, Austria, UK, Germany and deep below the earth’s surface (singing in a florescent orange hard-hat) inside a one thousand-year-old Copper Mine in Falun, Sweden, to name a few. LOIRE’s live performances have included radio concerts broadcast on Spanish National Radio 4, German Public Radio, Italian National Radio 3, Radio Freistadt (Austria), DRS (Swiss-German national radio), WNYC and National Public Radio in the United States, along with television appearances on PBS,Taipei National Television, and CBS 2.

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