The Walyalup Weekend of Improvised Music

The Walyalup Weekend of Improvised Music is a new festival held at PS Art Space in Walyalup/Fremantle on June 24 and 25. It is dedicated to community-building around improvised music, a thriving sub-community of Boorloo’s broader exploratory music scene.

Our program revolves around two evenings of first meeting plays of improvised music, complemented by a variety of workshops, talks, and more. WWIM will include:

• Two nights of concerts by local musicians in first-meeting collaborations. The full line-up can be viewed on our website.
• An improvising workshop in collaboration with Sound Exploration Fremantle.
• Provocations by interstate artists Jim Denley & Hannah Reardon-Smith.
• Talks by local artists on platforms and pathways for practicing as an improviser.
• An improvisation session directed by the WWIM team, open for public participation (no experience required).
• Stalls with merchandise, information, newsletter sign-up and EOI forms from local organisations connected to improvised music.

WWIM pays the rent to Save Our Songlines, of an amount equal to 2% of our income from ticket sales & donations.

Improvised music
Both a (loose) genre and an approach to sound making, where all sounds are welcome and any sounds that happen during a performance can become part of the music. Not improvising in an eight bar jazz-solo way: more of an attitude where anything could happen, and there are no pre-ordained goals or expected outcomes tied up in it. Variously, called “free improvisation”, “Echtzeitmusik”, “free jazz” or just “improvisation” by different cultures.

Exploratory music
A convenient umbrella term for sounds that are experimental, new, strange, bizarre, or otherwise hard to categorise. It often refers to music that is improvised, or which has different logics and intentions to music made using traditional music theories. It kind of also means that you can do whatever you want.

First meeting plays
When people who haven’t made music together do so, for the first time, in public. Sometimes this is as dramatic as them literally meeting for the first time right before performing, but can also be a pre-planned project debuting on stage, or a group that hadn’t played together until they were programmed together by a third party.

WWIM has been established to unite a diverse and intergenerational community interested in improvised music practice in Boorloo and Walyalup. Despite appearing regularly amidst the broader exploratory music scene, no dedicated platforms for this music have existed since the termination of Tura New Music’s ‘iMprov’ program in 2017.

Exploratory musicians in Boorloo have been creating compelling, highly contextual work informed by place for longer than people have worried about the ‘cultural cringe’. Yet an ongoing paradox for artists in Western Australia is a belief that artistic merit is not proven until success has been achieved elsewhere. 

The totally unique, community-centered, and isolated, environment in WA can and does facilitate excellent art made at home. You’re invited to celebrate the exploratory music scene we have here, at the Walyalup Weekend of Improvised Music.

Whether you’re interested in self made instruments, new playing techniques, incredible virtuosity, seeing a different side to iconic local indie musicians, ambient sound sculptures, or being introduced to the world of free improvisation and the people behind it in WA, this is the festival for you.

PS Art Space is a very spacious, wheelchair accessible space. The entire floorspace of the bar and performance area is at street level and on smooth concrete. It has one bathroom with two stalls; one women’s stall, and an accessible all-gender stall. Ample seating is available; seating can be moved. Performances may happen in different parts of the space. Basic lighting will be used (no strobes or flashing lights), and the music will vary in dynamics and can be very soft or very loud during various points.