Composer Creates Ice Instruments for London Concerts

By Duncan Geere, Wired UK

Norwegian composer and percussionist Terje Isungset will be visiting Somerset House in London between Jan. 7 and 9 to perform a series of concerts with instruments made out of ice.

The concert, titled Ice Music, is a partnership between Isungset and Phil Slocombe from Leeds, England-based arts organization Lumen. Slocombe's put together an installation inside a geodesic dome on Somerset House's River Terrace called The Idea of North, which features archive film and footage recorded by Mariele Neudecker.

Three times a day, Isungset will perform a concert in the dome made from instruments carved out of ice by Isungset in the mountains of Norway, including ice horns, an iceophone and ice percussion.

Isungset told Wired.co.uk:

"It is very inspiring to be able to make music out of [the] world's most important resource: water. Pure, clean water from a lake or river. I seek for new sounds in music, new colors; I try to find a new flower somehow -- and to me the ice opens up a new landscape. A landscape of beauty and silence.

"On the other hand, ice limits what you actually can do. Limits can be a positive thing in music. In this case the sound of the ice and the weather are the most important limits. Nature decides everything somehow. Ice Music also has a deeper meaning seen from an environment perspective, or even deeper when you know that water (frozen or not) has been on Earth millions of years longer than human beings -- and water will exist longer than human beings for sure."

As you might imagine, with the vagaries of the freezing process, no two instruments are quite the same. Isungset added, on that subject: "What instruments I can use ... very much [depends] on nature itself: the temperature. The icehorn is cold to blow and the tuning of it changes all the time since the horn melts inside while getting the warm air from my body. Ice instruments are very fragile, and as a musician you cannot practice on them -- the instrument will always be a new one."

Ice Music will be performed three times each day -- at 1 p.m., 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. -- and take place on the River Terrace at Somerset House in London. Tickets are £7.50, with concessions at £5.

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