Darren Abrahams

Activist, Artist, Change Agent, Connector, Educator/Teacher, Global soul, Idea generator, Musician, Performer, World traveler

Darren was born in Brighton on the south coast of England and has been singing all his life. His great passion is performance and he is fascinated by theatre of all kinds. He made his first theatrical appearances in musicals but eventually found his way into the classical world and has appeared in opera all over the UK, the US and Europe for such companies as English National Opera, the Wexford Festival, Teatro Comunale di Bologna and American Opera Projects. He is often asked to workshop new operas and spends much of his performing life singing new music. Darren is also part of a duo with award winning pianist Lindy Tennent-Brown, creating cabaret and recitals combining all the different styles of music they love - from Abba to Bellini and everything in between. Darren and Lindy work together to bring down the barriers that exist in traditional recitals – between musical styles, between art forms and between the performers and the audience. Whether responding to art works in a gallery, to a place or to an event, they draw upon their extensive knowledge of song repertoire to excite the senses and create a concert experience quite unlike any you have heard before. Coming from a performance training in theatre and opera, Darren has much personal experience working in the arts which he brings to his work as a trainer and animateur. For the past 15 years he has been regularly involved in leading theatre projects for young people, actively designing and running workshops for mixed ages 5 to 18. He has facilitated theatre summer schools in both the UK the US and mainland Europe, creating work that has ranged from improvised scenes to full scale musical productions, in venues as diverse as a skate park in Surrey to a lakeside in Maine. As an opera singer Darren has worked as a singing animateur for many of the major British opera companies (including The Royal Opera, Glyndebourne, Opera North, WNO and Garsington Opera) in projects ranging from intensive weekends creating a finished performance, to three hour introductory sessions designed to prepare inexperienced opera goers to see a production that evening. Workshops can involve participants ranging from ages 10 to 80 in schools, community centres and universities. In 2002 Darren began his training in Sound Healing and has achieved Level 2 Power of Sound from The School of Sacred Sound, Australia. This training is an intensive course in the use of sound for healing purposes, both on a one to one level and in a group, and is designed to open up the natural voice using a mixture of games, breathing techniques and meditation. From this training Darren has co-designed Circular Sounds (www.circularsounds.org), a unique experiential process based on placing six creative elements - Language, Shape, Colour, Movement, Sound and Feelings - within a mandala. Primarily a tool for transformation it is effective in many different situations - therapeutic, corporate, educational, transpersonal – and for people of all ages. Much of this work has been informed by working with the composer Nigel Osborne and Opera Circus on summer school projects in Bosnia. Darren is co-founder and Trustee on the Board of The Edward Starr Charitable Trust (www.starrtrust.com), an organisation created to fund projects globally to help children smile. Since their founding in 2008 the Trust has funded projects in Belarus, Bosnia, India, Israel/Palestine, Tanzania, Uganda and the UK and is actively pursuing further partners around the world. Current projects include Slim Peace Teens – a nutrition and healthy lifestyle and female empowerment programme for teenage girls in the Middle East. In his position as Projects Director Darren has created CHOCS - Children Helping Other Children Smile - an education project teaching project management skills to Year 9/10 students whilst fundraising for a chosen charity. CHOCS creates year long partnerships between students, a local business and a Starr Trust charity in order to create connections, raise awareness and build community. Darren is also building the Starr Trust Alliance, a network of small children focused charities around the world, for the purposes of creating joint projects, sharing best practice and lending support. Members come from as far afield as Mumbai, India and Urubamba, Peru. Darren holds an LRAM teaching certificate from the Royal Academy of Music and a BA Hons in Drama from the University of East Anglia. He is two thirds of the way through a three year professional training in Somatic Experiencing, a healing modality designed to alleviate and release the symptoms of trauma, and also partway through his diploma as a Life and Business Coach. In his spare time he likes to do nothing.

Using the creative arts for transformation - personal, social and global. I am most excited about helping others to unlock their innate creativity and witnessing the profound changes that occur.

Acting, Compassionate Listening, Group Facilitation, leadership development, Opera/ Classical Singing, Singing, Sound Healing, Trauma, Working with children at social risk, Workshop Facilitator