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Mornington Improv Collective

presenting music improvisation events and workshops

What We're About
  • growing a collective of improvising musicians

  • learning 'deep listening' skills

  • the importance of silence within music-making

  • an exploration of sound: what is music?

  • celebrating connection to place through sound

  • developing spontaneity and risk-taking within rehearsed music making

  • stretching note-reading musos to fly on their instruments without a score!

  • engaging muso's with a diversity of notations

  • small and large ensemble improvs

  • improvisation as a cross-genre, cross-cultural artform

  • improvisation as storytelling

  • musical conversations

  • how to structure improvisations

  • using 'creative flow' and spontaneity as the narrative

  • discovering the language/signature of your musical identity

  • utilising the ‘mistake’ as inspiration!

  • a range of workshops for a range of musicians

Brendan O'Hara

on dawn mediations at the Flinders Fringe 2024

a highly intuitive dialogue that settled the emotions; bringing calm, bringing us home to our breath...the tranquility of the audience was palpable. The individual performances had flowed into one...

Brendan O'Hara

the improv sessions...have been challenging, exhilarating, inspiring and motivational for me. I’m looking forward to more...

Robyn Oswald Jacobs

trio concert at the Flinders Fringe 2024

Wonderful, wonderful...

What's On

Music Improvisation Workshops 

May - June 2024

MIC with special guest

Ria Soemardjo

Poul Grage, Anne Norman and Ria Soemardjo       (photo © Noa Smith-Fletcher)

Improvisation

 Workshops for Muso’s

Are you a skilled and passionate muso?
Open to creating your own music with others?
Not sure if you can improvise,
but would like to!!

Wednesdays in 2024

Starting May 29th then June 12th 19th and 26th

7-9pm  St Mark's Church, Barkly St., Mornington

A series of four workshops (each of 2 hours duration)

Cost: $40 discount package for all 4 workshops

or $20 per individual workshop

strings, wind, percussion,

keyboard, voice... 

 

You've honed your performance skills over years with
one-on-one tutelage and buckets of practice...now it’s
time to channel your skills to make spontaneous music!

Facilitated by Poul Grage (percussion) VIT and Anne Norman (shakuhachi/flute) WCC with guest facilitator Ria Soemardjo (voice/percussion)

Anne, Poul and Ria are professional performers who

regularly feature improvisation in their gigs.

Anne Norman and Poul Grage    (photo © Noa Smith-Fletcher)

MAXIMUM of 20 participants  (all ages over 14) 

 

A wonderful opportunity! This season of MIC impro workshops is

generously subsidised by a Performing Arts Development Grant

from the Mornington Peninsula Shire. As a result, participants

only pay $40 total for the four sessions.

CONTACT US FOR MORE INFO 

Anne 

Poul

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MiC work on Bunurrong lands, we pay our deepest respects to Elders past and present, who have sung and danced on Bunurong Country for tens of thousands of years and have never ceded sovereignty. We also pay our respects to the lands, waters, flora and fauna of this beautiful Country.

Past Projects

Flinders Fringe Festival

23-25 February 2024 

Leave Only Footprints and Echoes

Anne Norman (Shakuhachi/voice)

Poul Grage (percussion)

with special guest

Ria Soemardjo (vocals)

Poul Grage, Anne Norman and Ria Soemardjo       

(photo © Noa Smith-Fletcher)

Reflections on the Dawn Meditation by Brendan O'Hara

Leave only footprints and echoes -  Listening Trail
performed by Poul Grage, Anne Norman and Ria Soemardjo

It was still pretty dark, so one couldn’t clearly see, but I know amongst other things there were shells and tinkly things, and hollow wooden bits being caressed to give forth their sounds of the Earth.  Poul’s Beach Percussion blended softly, sweetly with the Sea’s calm quiet, bringing peace to my slowing heart. It was as though he was speaking with the Ocean and the yet to be risen Sun. This was a highly intuitive dialogue that settled the emotions; bringing calm, bringing us home to our breath, enjoining our Spirits to unite with the Great Spirit. We wandered up the steps to where Anne awaited with her Shakuhachi. In the breath is the Spirit. Anne’s playing embodied the Spirit of the Land, the Sea, the Air, the swirling Planets. Sweetly in tune with the Natural surrounds, blending her breath, her sounds, with the Birds, the Trees, the Sea, the Sky, into a gentle call to the awakening day. I was aware of the continuum of morning birdsong that flows around our beautiful Mother Earth. Peace and Calm deepened within me.  ​ We wandered further up the steps to be greeted by Ria with her single Gong and her Voice of, and from, the Heavenly Spheres. Her ethereal singing and almost silent, but strongly felt, Gong lifted our Hearts into the Now, into the joy embodied in the growing chorus of birds; the glory of the dawning. This was a Somatic experience, uniting the physical, emotional and mental bodies into one; Peace and Calm deepened even further. Not a performance, this was a harmonious intermingling with Nature; an extension, an expansion of the Dawn. All three are gifted Spiritual Musicians. Their music being deeply embedded in the Spirit World, brought one to feelings of peaceful calm, to joy-filled at-one-moment with the Sky, the Trees and the Rocks, the Ocean. At the conclusion the tranquility of the group was palpable. The individual contributions had flowed into one, which was altogether Miraculous. ​ Brendan O'Hara

Summer Improvisation Workshops
DIVING IN: for skilled musos who want to venture into musical improvisation and experimentation

Want to get involved? Scroll up for the current series of workshops!

Wednesdays 28th February and 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th March 2024

7-9pm @ St Mark's Church, Barkly St Mornington
A series of five workshops (each of
2 hours duration)

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