Jazz breaking news: Cold Comfort As The Iceman Cometh
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
If you’re stockpiling thermals, wearing ever thicker coats, looking remarkably like the Michelin man and generally feeling freezing, then how about an alternative indoors “concert hall” experience looking at ice rather than actually shivering at home? Step forward Terje Isungset who is shortly to tour his Ice Music and Tribute to Nature project.
Isungset makes ice instruments from solid blocks of pure ice and has been doing so to general astonishment for years recording such albums as the enticingly titled 2009 album Hibernation. Clearly the Norwegian is no southern softie, preferring his music-making to take place in the harshest conditions possible, preferably perishingly cold as he's no stranger to the inside of frozen waterfalls, or the top of vertigo-inducing glaciers. Isungset is performing Ice Music with vocalist Lena Nymark at venues in Oxford, Manchester and London in November, a piece that features an “iceophone” which is, quite frankly, not built to last. ‘Tribute To Nature’ by contrast is ostensibly a drums and percussion piece bristling with unusual things to shake, hit and bang.
The performance also features ‘The Idea of North’, a sound and film installation utilising visuals of Nordic landscapes put together by film maker Phil Slocombe with live music again from Isungset and Nymark. Dates are North Wall, Oxford (Saturday 5 November); Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester (Monday 7 November) and LSO St Luke’s, London (Tuesday 8 November).
– Stephen Graham
For Oxford tickets go to www.ocmevents.org; for Manchester, www.rncm.ac.uk; and for London, www.lso.co.uk