Inside a giant igloo in a snowy Norwegian village, the sound of a horn rings out, warming the mood of a freezing audience, huddled together in minus-24°C.
However, the four musicians performing are even colder: The instruments they are playing are all made of ice.
The xylophone, claves and wind instruments have been painstakingly carved from ice blocks extracted from a frozen lake, and are now part of a finger-numbing performance at the 13th Ice Music Festival in the mountain village of Finse.
Photo: AFP
The problem is, the longer the musicians play, the more the instruments start to disintegrate.
It is not an easy task “to perform on instruments that are melting while you play them,” said percussionist Terje Isungset, the founder of the festival.
Wearing thick wool gloves, he blows warm air into his ice-sculpted horn, illuminated under blue and turquoise lights.
Photo: AFP
Next to him, a singer with an angelic voice covers her mouth with a scarf to stay warm, while a bass player removes his gloves so he can pull the strings on his ice-made instrument.
The setting of the festival, 195km west of Oslo, is not for anyone sensitive to a shivering climate.
Held between Feb. 2 and Feb. 3 inside an igloo built solely of ice, dozens of people wearing clothing fit to survive freezing mountain weather sit on snow benches while cheering and wrapping their arms around each other.
Photo: AFP
As the night grows older, a band member blows into a long ice wind instrument shaped like an Australian didgeridoo, vibrating across the venue.
“It’s a fine line between art and madness,” Emile Holba, a UK-based photographer and crew member, said as he bursts into laughter.
“Things can go wrong, instruments can break ... the audience likes the purity of it,” he added.
The festival has previously been held in Geilo, a ski resort in the central mountain region of Norway.
However, organizers said the weather there has become milder, making it difficult to build ice venues and harder to prevent the instruments from melting.
“This winter ... the ice was really slushy and difficult to deal with,” Isungset said. “It’s the first time I have seen ice like this.”
In search of guaranteed freezing temperatures, the festival moved further west to Finse, a 30-minute train ride from Geilo.
Surrounded by mountains framing a glacier, the area was used to create the snow planet “Hoth” in the opening scene of Star Wars movie The Empire Strikes Back.
The village was also the base for Antarctic expedition training by British explorer Ernest Shackleton (1874 to 1922) and his Norwegian counterpart Fridtjof Nansen (1861 to 1930).
“It’s kind of otherworldly ... there is magic there,” Holba said.
Preparing the festival is no simple task.
It took organizers a week to build the igloo and the ice needed to be sourced and collected by a crew of more than 20 people.
Large chunks were removed from a nearby lake and the musicians used chainsaws, hammers and chisels to carefully sculpt the instruments.
“It’s just music .... and trying to create something out of nearly nothing,” Isungset said.
After the festival, some of the instruments do become nearly nothing again, the ice dripping away back into the earth, but a few of the ice creations do survive.
If deemed to be in good enough shape, the instruments are stored inside a freezer, waiting in frozen isolation, to be used again the following year.
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
ALLIES: Calling Putin his ‘old friend,’ Xi said Beijing stood alongside Russia ‘in the face of the international counter-current of unilateralism and hegemonic bullying’ Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday was in Moscow for a state visit ahead of the Kremlin’s grand Victory Day celebrations, as Ukraine accused Russia’s army of launching air strikes just hours into a supposed truce. More than 20 foreign leaders were in Russia to attend a vast military parade today marking 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, taking place three years into Russia’s offensive in Ukraine. Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022 and has marshaled the memory of Soviet victory against Nazi Germany to justify his campaign and rally society behind the offensive,
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
CONFLICTING REPORTS: Beijing said it was ‘not familiar with the matter’ when asked if Chinese jets were used in the conflict, after Pakistan’s foreign minister said they were The Pakistan Army yesterday said it shot down 25 Indian drones, a day after the worst violence between the nuclear-armed rivals in two decades. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed to retaliate after India launched deadly missile strikes on Wednesday morning, escalating days of gunfire along their border. At least 45 deaths were reported from both sides following Wednesday’s violence, including children. Pakistan’s military said in a statement yesterday that it had “so far shot down 25 Israeli-made Harop drones” at multiple location across the country. “Last night, India showed another act of aggression by sending drones to multiple locations,” Pakistan military spokesman Ahmed