Tuesday, August 02, 2022
Tuesday, February 15, 2022
Saturday, February 12, 2022
The film "Sound of ice" is in progress!
London-based sales agent Dogwoof has picked up world rights to Tommy Gulliksen’s Sound Of Ice, a documentary about musician Terje Isungset’s project to produce and play musical instruments crafted from each of the world’s most endangered glaciers.
Even though making music from ice is close to impossible, it is Isungset’s obsession. His instruments are only used once before they melt and disappear. Climate change has made ice music difficult and Terje’s artistic project even more urgent. When he receives an unexpected invitation to play in China’s greatest opera house, Terje decides to build an instrument from each of the world’s most endangered glaciers to bring to Beijing.
Monday, January 31, 2022
New album! Terje Isungset "Glacial poetry".
New album to be released at BandCamp.
https://terjeisungset.bandcamp.com
New ice music album from Terje Isungset to be released on February 5th - 2022.
In January 2021 he did build an igloo up in the mountains of Norway at Bergsjøstølen. The igloo was Isungsets recording studio for the entire winter.
When listening to the album you are invited in to the winter magic inside an intimate snow room of 6 x 6 square meters. Everything is based on the Nature itself
Check the video from the song "When ice sings"
Saturday, January 01, 2022
Some photos from the opening of the new Norwegian Embassy in Washington DC - Dec 8th 2021.
All photos by Anthony Bolognese www.capitolhill.photo
Sweaters by Dale of Norway.
Singer: Amalie Holt Kleive.
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Interview in the Canadian Music Works Magazine this month.
Cold Wave
Circumpolar artists Matthew Burtner, Paul Walde, Jana Winderen, and Terje Isungset bear sonic witness to Arctic warming.
‘Nature is the boss’
For more than twenty years, Terje Isungset has been sculpting his own genre, which he calls ice music, carving blocks of frozen H2O into wind, percussion, and even string instruments—all of which are playable during their limited lifespans. While Jana Winderen approaches climate-inspired music as science, Isungset approaches it more like spirituality. “I am very connected to nature, and I have been this way all my life,” he says. “And not in a religious way, because I’m not religious at all. But with ice, you have to trust nature. It decides everything with the music. It decides the quality of the sound, depending on how the ice freezes. Imagine if you’re playing a piece on a piano and you don’t know if the piano will have sound or not.”
A low-key mystic with a long history as a percussionist in Norway’s jazz scene, Terje Isungset conducts a practice that is about bringing music back to its origins in the natural world, performing on wood, rocks, and animal bones. His interest in ice began when he was invited to perform a concert at a frozen waterfall in Lillehammer in 2000. A year later, he independently released what he claims was the world’s first ice-music recording.
In Isungset’s ice music, there is a quiet intimacy. But performing and recording it comes with its own set of challenges, related to the ephemeral nature of the instruments. “It’s very important to have a stable temperature, and a place that is silent. No noise, because some of the ice instruments are very soft-sounding. We need to gain everything up really high and sometimes the noisiest part will be my stomach!”
The shimmering, crystalline tones that Isungset draws from the blocks of an iceofon (ice marimba)—which he strikes or taps with gloved hands—can be mesmerizing for audiences. For his ice horns, he uses a piece of leather, given to him by one of the Sámi people, to protect his lips. This sense of spectacle extends to the Ice Music Festival Norway, which the artist has organized annually since 2006, and which take place inside structures made of ice and snow. These gatherings in the cold, dark, remote Norwegian winter bring together musicians, dancers, architects, and poets, as well as scientists giving talks on the effects of climate change.
Although the 2021 edition of the festival was cancelled due to COVID-19, Isungset organized a virtual concert entitled On Nature’s Conditions, which he describes as “an interdisciplinary climate-related project, where nature will control the environmental conditions,” or more succinctly, “Nature is the boss!” Isungset performed solo on an iceofon from within an igloo, while outdoor solo-dance and visual ice-arts performances happened simultaneously. The artist viewed the event as a way of dealing with both climate grief and loneliness.
“Human beings, we are very small and not very important at all,” muses Isungset. “And we’ve been on the planet such a short time, like one millisecond and then we destroy everything . . . and then it’s goodbye.”
Top Photo by Jana Winderen. Matthew Burtner photo and Glacier Music cover by Matthew Burtner. Video still of Paul Walde performing Ice Record (part of Alaska Variations) taken by Michael Conti. Photo of Jana Winderen hydrophone recording in the Barents Sea taken by a crew member of R/V Helmer Hanssen research vessel. Photo of Terje Isungset taken by Emile Holba.
Tuesday, November 23, 2021
Arctic Ice Music Ensemble tour in the UK - photos and press reviews
Thanks a lot to all fantastic audiences in England that came to see our sold out concerts.
Line up:
Terje Isungset on ice instruments, Sami singer Sara Marielle Gaup Beaska, trumpeter Lyder Øverås Røed, singer Amalie Holt Kleive and video artist Anastasia Isachsen; Sweden’s Viktor Reuter on double bass; Inuit throat singers Akinisie Sivuarapik and Amaly Sallualuk plus Tuvan throat singer and member of acclaimed band Huun Huur Tu, Radik Tyulyush.
Ina Charlotte Moe: ice helper.
Tor Magne Hallibakken: sound design.
Management: Sound UK.
Woolen sweaters by Dale of Norway.
The Times:
Bristol Magazine
https://www.thereviewshub.com/arctic-ice-music-howard-assembly-room-leeds/
https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/region/arctic-ice-music-terje-isungset/
https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/chaud-au-coeur-la-musique-ecolo-du-norvegien-givre-terje-isungset
Monday, November 08, 2021
Tuesday, November 02, 2021
Some photos from the Groupa tour.
We did 15 concerts in Norway, Sweden and Danmark.
Most concerts where sold out.
Thanks to all our guests:Lena Willemark, Ingfrid Breie Nyhus, Lena Willemark, Sara Parkman, Samantha Ohlanders, Sofia Sandén and Ulrika Bodén. The tech crew Johannes Lundberg and Sofia Andersson.
And the audience and local organizers. A big hug and thanks to Folkmusikens hus and Lotta Johansson.
Also thanks to the film crew from Gotheburg that have been following us for some months. A documentary to be released!
Some photos:
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