Norwegian Ice Festival Performers Use Instruments Made of Ice, Composer Terje Isungset Releases Album 'Meditations' Using His Ice Creations

During these frigid winter days, it seems like everything is freezing over. Some people don’t mind the cold though, they even prefer it. Take, for example, the musicians in the Norwegian village of Geilo who are performing with instruments made of ice for Norwegian composer and percussionist Terje Isungset annual Ice Music Festival.

The ice instruments will include wind instruments, string and percussion. The idea for this chilly event came from Isungset, who was inspired after he was asked to perform inside of a frozen waterfall in 2000.

The festival is just the beginning of Isungset’s love affair with icy instruments. The percussionist has recorded a new album, Meditations, all with instruments carved from blocks of ice. The music was also recorded in the incredible areas where the blocks of ice were found, including the Canadian Arctic. To achieve this miraculous feat, he was only able to record for an hour, continuously moving to keep warm. He would then have to go somewhere warm before his equipment and technicians started to freeze.

Meditations hasn’t been his first work with ice instruments. Since 2000, he has recorded seven albums using ice as his primary source of sound. This beautiful obsession lead him to found Geilo’s annual Ice Music Festival in 2006. Now, artist from around the world come to Norway to try out all of his magnificent creations.

Some of Isungset’s instruments include the iceofon (like a xylophone with tuned planks of ice), the icehorn (a trumpet-like instrument), the isringle (hanging blocks of ice played as chimes), and ice harps, cellos, and guitars, with strings strung against resonating ice. The colder the weather, the better the instruments sound. A strip of leather protects the players mouth from the ice horn and gloves are used from the ice guitar, though Isungset says that some people brave the pain and go without them.

Meditations was launched at the 10th-anniversary Ice Music Festival, featuring the debut of an ice double-bass Musicians will play under the stars on a stage made of ice.