Ice music pioneer, Terje Isungset is set to make his Poole debut when he plays Lighthouse on Wednesday 19 November with his exquisite quartet. Featuring voice, ice harp, ice horn, iceophone, ice percussion and ice bass, this ice concert is a tribute to the most important thing in the whole world – nature – and is based on music from Terje’s albums Winter Songs and Beauty of Winter, alongside newer material from the Ice Quartet album released a year ago.
Composer and percussionist, Terje Isungset is one of Europe’s most accomplished and innovative percussionists and a pioneer of ice instruments.
Here, he sheds more light on his unique approach to music...
Where does the ice come from?
Natural frozen ice is harvested from the lakes in Norway. The sort of artificial, machine-made ice is useless. It is acoustically dead. That’s a logistical problem for me, but also rather nice – the notion that only ice directly from nature has musical potential.
Each winter, in ‘harvesting time’, the ice is hewn out of the lakes. First, you use a manual ice drill. Then you push your saw blade in and start sawing by hand. The trickiest part is to pull the ice blocks out without falling in the water.
Does the ice sound different depending on where it is harvested?
It does. I have some secret places, lakes where there is normally good-sounding ice – but you can never be sure. It’s like wine. You have good years and bad years.
And the sound of ice reflects human activity too. I have known ice harvested from the same lake at the same time to vary widely in sound. That was in Russia, and I think it related to pollution levels.
How are the instruments created?
The instruments are made from the natural frozen ice harvested from the lakes in Norway and are carved by skilled professional ice carvers using saws, drills and chisels.
How are the instruments transported and kept frozen during the tour?
We have a special ice trailer which transports all the ice instruments and keeps them frozen at below -20ºC while on tour.
However, we use local ice where possible, particularly when travelling to very far and very cold places. For example, when we travelled to China, Japan, Russia, Canada, USA, Australia(!), Greenland, the Alps in Europe and Finland.
We enjoy collaborating with the locals to create a magic ice happening, harvesting ice from various lakes to find the best sound, then creating the instruments and performing a concert. Sometimes, we also build the venue out of snow and ice – normally an amphitheatre or an igloo. After the concert, we give everything back to nature – the venue and the instruments – as these are not mine. I simply have borrowed them from nature.
How are the instruments kept frozen on stage?
They are not. Whilst on stage in an indoor concert hall (or any concert venue above 0ºC), the instruments are slowly melting.
This is mitigated by strategically placed dry ice around the instruments, but this is why the concert cannot last over 90 minutes and is performed without an interval. Lighting is also a consideration. Ideally, venues use LED lights that produce less heat than traditional lighting and lighting is strategically placed to not direct unnecessary heat onto the instruments.
The audience are all seated in the concert hall before the instruments are moved onto the stage – to reduce the amount of time that the ice instruments are onstage.
The temperature in the concert hall is normal. Around 22ºC. As far as we know there are no other musicians or bands in the world that can play a full scale indoor ice concert.
Do the instruments sound different between the beginning and end of the tour?
Yes. While outside of the refrigerated trailer, the instruments slowly melt on stage. This means that the instruments are slightly smaller by the end of the tour. This also affects the sound and tuning of the instruments, which means the musicians are constantly needing to fine tune their instruments. Each concert hall is different and the ice sounds and reacts differently depending on the environmental conditions of the space and the size of the audience within it.
Does the cold of the ice affect the tuning of the stringed instruments (like the ice bass and ice harp)? How are they kept in tune?
The combination of strings, the cold, the warm, the humidity, the melting ice and staying in tune is only to be done by very skilled musicians. It is very challenging for sure!
I tune the ice instruments before every concert to be exactly in tune. The stringed instruments have to be adjusted before and during the concerts.
What’s the next ice instrument you would like to create?
One instrument for peace! And one instrument for taking care of nature! At my Ice Music Festival we always have the Instrument of the Year. This has been going for 21 years now. We have made some of the most amazing ice instruments, like the TubaIce and the IglooSax. Can you imagine the sound and what they look like?
What’s the most unusual ice instrument you’ve created?
We had the amazing trumpet player Arve Henriksen to play an ice trumpet in to the lake. We made a hole in the ice then from the other side of the lake we made another hole and picked up the sound via a hydrophone mic, and then sent the sound to the stage. So the audience could listen to the same music as the fishes in the lake! And we performed together with this sound, along with my band on stage.
Why ice?
In 1999, I was commissioned to write music for a concert under a frozen waterfall at Lillehammer, Norway and decided to use elements from the river itself as musical instruments in the composition – stones, wood and, finally, ice.
I took the sound from underneath the waterfall, and then I hit the ice. I thought it was so beautiful. It was like falling in love.
Discovering the sounds of natural ice opened up a whole new range of sonic possibilities – the ice journey had begun!
:: Terje Isungset Ice Quartet play Lighthouse on Wednesday 19 November. Tickets available now at https://www.lighthousepoole.co.uk/event/terje-isungset-ice-quartet/ and on 01202 280000.