“Brittle bursts that mimic cymbals. Deep hollowed notes reminiscent of metal drums,” writes Lola Akinmade Åkerström in Monday’s (3/1) NationalGeographic.com. “These are some of the surprising sounds that Siberian percussion group Ethnobeat created from Russia’s frozen Lake Baikal in a 2012 viral video that introduced millions around the globe to ice music…. In 2000 Norwegian composer and percussionist Terje Isungset performed the world’s first ice music concert inside a frozen waterfall in Lillehammer. Six years later Isungset founded the annual Ice Music Festival Norway, drawing curious adventurers willing to brave subzero temperatures … (This winter’s festival was canceled due to the pandemic, but he’s planning to livestream a concert on March 14.).… Isungset has now performed hundreds of ice music concerts … and recorded eight albums under his own All Ice Records label…. Carved instruments can be either completely made of ice, such as horns and percussion, or hybrids, like harps, in which the main body is ice with metal strings attached…. American artist Tim Linhart … builds ice orchestras that are used to play genres from rock-and-roll to classical at an igloo-theater … The event itself metaphorically mimics global warming as it melts away.”
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