The Score | Ice, Ice, Baby

In Winnipeg, Canada, midwinter temperatures regularly plunge to the negative double digits, but that’s when things get really cooking at the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. At one concert during the orchestra’s annual New Music Festival in January and February, a capacity crowd of 500 people jammed into an outdoor amphitheater created by ice architect Luca Roncoroni to hear John Luther Adams’s Inuksuit on a program entitled “Glacial Time.” Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra Resident Conductor Julian Pellicano led the Adams work, featuring percussionist Victoria Sparks and the University of Manitoba Percussion Ensemble, and Norwegian artist and multi-­instrumentalist Terje Insungset performed his own Beauty of Winter on ice instruments. The weeklong festival, led by Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra Music Director Daniel Raiskin with Harry Stafylakis as co-curator and composer in residence, featured ten world premieres, plus panels, discussions, a composers institute, and noon-hour concerts. Performers included the progressive-metal band Animals as Leaders, the vocal octet Roomful of Teeth, the Canadian ensemble collectif9, a string band, and the percussion quartet Architek—and most concerts, thankfully, were indoors.