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Your weekly community newspaper covering Mornington, Mount Martha and Mount Eliza
Tuesday 20 February 2024
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Tuning into improvisation
Picture: Yanni
IMPROVISATION has transformed the way composer and performer Anne Norman thinks and feels about music. The internationally renowned shakuhachi player (a type of Japanese flute) is co-running musical improvisation workshops this month and next. Participants will step into the unknown in the acoustic series for strings, wind, percussion, keyboard and voice. A classically trained musician, Norman says she played and wrote music for decades before discovering the freedom of improvisation following a change in life circumstances. “I started working with actors and dancers and, in creating music for them, I found I could use their bodies as my score, and it was really liberating,” she said. Windows opened up and Norman delved further into the world of music improvisation, studying techniques and honing her skills to better respond to sound and visual cues. Norman says improvised music allows for self-expression and fosters a strong, creative relationship between musician and instrument. “It can be incredibly exciting when you are in free impro mode with another artist and you both move in the same direction at the same time,” she said. “It also enhances your listening skills and your awareness of the other. It can actually be quite mystical at times.” The workshops will be held by Norman and musician Paol Grage from the Mornington Improv Collective. The $30 a session workshops subsidised by Mornington Peninsula Shire Council are for skilled musicians who want to try musical improvisation will be held at Saint Marks Uniting Church, Mornington, from 7pm on Wednesday 28 February and 6, 13, 20 and 27 March. Details: events.humanitix.com/summer-improvisationworkshops/tickets Liz Bell
Wards new names, new boundaries Keith Platt keith@mpnews.com.au NEW boundaries and nine new names have been announced for 11 singlecouncillor wards on the Mornington Peninsula. The changes will be used in the October council elections and replace the existing six wards, three of which have more than one councillor. The names of the shire’s 11 wards are Beek Beek, Benbenjie, Briars, Brokil, Coolart, Kackeraboite, Moorooduc, Nepean, Tanti, Tootgarook and Warringine. Briars and Nepean are the only
existing wards to retain their names, although each will be reduced in size and represented by one councillor. Briars ward currently has three councillors and Nepean two. The panel rejected changing Briars to Tichingorourke Ward and Nepean to Monmar. Ward names to be dropped are Cerberus, Red Hill, Seawinds and Watson. Six of the new ward names were on a list of 15 suggested by the shire. The changes to the municipal structure were announced in a December report by a three-person electoral structure review panel appointed last year by the Local Government Minis-
ter Melissa Horne. The panel said it decided the peninsula should continue to be represented by 11 councillors after considering the size and shape of wards along with the number of candidates who had contested past elections, incidences of uncontested elections and rates of informal voting. The panel said it had suggested Aboriginal ward names if it was the name of a place within a ward; the name was commonly used; and if it was registered under the Geographic Place Names Act 1998. The report said Cr Steve Holland had told a panel hearing last November that he believed reducing
the number of councillors from 11 to nine would save money and “allow equitable representation” throughout the shire. The panel said it found “no justifiable benefits in any nine singlecouncillor ward models to offset this increased [councillor] workload”. However, the panel had “agreed with the suggestion made by Cr Holland to simplify the names of wards based on significant features within wards”. Along with the new ward names and boundaries have come claims that the results may be subject to gerrymander, or manipulation, by political parties. “The result is a gerrymander be-
cause it is not based on the democratic, well established in Australia, system of only having a plus or minus deviation of 10 per cent to keep electoral areas as close as possible to even numbers,” Red Hill Ward’s Cr David Gill said. “My geographical area went up by nearly 10 per cent. It was 50 per cent of the shire, it’s now 60 per cent. “I believe only having [the local governmenr minister] in charge of electoral boundaries for local government leads to the possibility of the first political gerrymander in Australian history.” Aboriginal name for youth hub. Page 6
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