Music improvisation workshop with Iorsa Collective (Lucy & Jessica)

The afternoon workshop on the Friday afternoon with Lucy Walsh and Jessica McNulty is based on improvisation, in order to provide accessibility for young musicians across genres. This is to cater for the fact that most young musicians on the island play Scottish traditional music, and therefore the tendency is to learn by ear as opposed to reading Western classical notation. We will work with visual and written stimulus, encouraging the children to connect soundworlds and harmonies to images and poetry. Through this connection, we will encourage the children to explore writing spoken word pieces, and improvising on their instruments to accompany these. The aim is to not only open these young people up to the world of contemporary musical improvisation, but also spoken word poetry.

Lucy Walsh, flautist and Jessica McNulty (flautist and librettist)are both in their final year at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and have received training in both classical improvisation (with David Dolan), and contemporary improvisation and composition (Creative Instrumentalist classes with flautist/composer Ian Clarke). Jessica has also received training in Creative Writing during her studies.