About Us
Bringing Worlds Together Through Music And The Arts...Sounds Across Oceans is a new not-for-profit music organisation established by composer/educator Dr. Anthony Garcia, to explore and promote a more holistic vision of music and its role in society. Through innovative education programs, workshops, festival curation, and performances that focus on collaboration, improvisation, and experimentation SAO builds bridges between genres, cultures, and communities.
Established in 2014 Sounds Across Oceans grew out of growing recognition that music had traditionally played a fundamental role in fostering creative thinking and expression across fields and that new modes of practice that integrated a more diverse range of styles and approaches to music-making were essential for this to continue. The name Sounds Across Oceans symbolizes our desire to develop a global creative vision while exploring the multidimensional capacity of music to create and share new ideas, uplift, heal, shift energies and ignite new perspectives.
Sounds Across Oceans approach fosters inclusivity and explores how the arts across disciplines, can come together to offer our world solutions in finding meaning, clarity of self, as well as having fun..
To date Sounds Across Oceans workshops have been facilitated in Thailand (Sounds Across Oceans Thailand https://www.
New Pedagogies of Practice: Teaching Methodology
The methodology underpinning the SAO approach has evolved from research into improvisational practice, intercultural collaboration and action learning and emphasizes the importance of respect, cultural sensitivity, musical openness, spontaneity and mentor-guided risk taking. An important objective of SAO is to research and document the methods and processes that generate healthy, positive artistic, psychosocial outcomes for participating students, artists and organizations.
The SAO approach employs a mixture of traditional and experimental learning methods such as playing and arranging songs and instrumental works by ear, using notational frameworks where appropriate, free and guided improvisation and group composition. Our open and flexible collaborative teaching method is conducive to bringing participants of differing skill levels, styles, instrument groupings and from different musical traditions together to develop new creative pathways together. The results continue to inspire and are a reminder that with the appropriate guidance people of all ages and stages can generate beautiful original musical ideas.
Board of Directors
Co Founder Anthony Garcia Artistic Director
Co Founder Jennifer Garcia Chairman
Director Patrick Manahan
Sounds Across Oceans ABN 90 289 059 651
