Terje Isungset’s Ice Music: The Norwegian Who Plays Instruments of Ice

A horn carved from clear ice, drums that will be water by spring, a harp that has to be rebuilt every winter. Norwegian percussionist Terje Isungset has spent more than two decades turning frozen water into instruments: horns, drums, harps and more, carved fresh for each winter and played until they melt.

Who is Terje Isungset?

Isungset was born on 4 May 1964 in Hol, Norway, and grew up in the mountain resort of Geilo. A jazz drummer by training, he has long built his own instruments from natural materials: arctic birch, granite, slate and sheep bells, as well as ice. He won the Vossajazz prize in 1996 and the Edvard Prize in 2008 for the album Igloo.

How Ice Music began in a frozen waterfall

In 1999 the winter festival in Lillehammer commissioned Isungset to compose and perform inside a frozen waterfall. “It sounded fantastic, so I wanted to continue the work,” he later told Smithsonian magazine. That year he conceived the idea he calls Ice Music, and in 2001 he recorded Iceman Is, the first of ten Ice Music albums. Later records include Igloo (2006) with singer Sidsel Endresen, Hibernation (2009) and World of Glass (2014) with trumpeter Arve Henriksen.

How ice instruments are made and why they sound different

Every instrument starts as a block of natural ice. For the Ice Music Festival, carvers have used ice from frozen Lake Finse and a nearby glacier, shaping it with chainsaws, chisels and hammers. The range has grown over the years to include the ice horn Isungset plays himself, ice drums and percussion, an ice trumpet, an ice harp, an ice guitar and even an ice double bass with a wooden neck and gut strings.

The kind of ice matters. Natural lake ice rings far better than ice from a freezer; festival co-producer Emile Holba has said that artificially frozen ice “has no sound properties”. Dartmouth ice researcher Erland Schulson suspects that trapped air bubbles shape the sound, though he calls that a guess. Because each block is different, every instrument is unique, and each one lasts only as long as the cold.

Ice concerts with Mari Kvien Brunvoll

On stage, Isungset often works with singers. In a 2012 television concert he played with vocalist Mari Kvien Brunvoll, the voice weaving through struck ice percussion and the soft tones of the ice horn under coloured lights. His projects range from solo concerts inside igloos to the Ice Quartet, the Arctic Ice Music Ensemble and an Ice Band that has played with orchestras in concert halls, and he has performed in Canada, the United States, Japan, India, China, Russia, Turkey, Australia and across Europe.

The Ice Music Festival in Norway

Isungset founded the Ice Music Festival so that other musicians, sculptors and artists could explore the sound of ice. It was first held in Geilo in 2006, later moved to Finse because warmer winters made Geilo’s ice unreliable, and in 2021 took place at Bergsjøstølen in Ål. Everything at the festival, from the stage to the instruments, is built from ice and snow, and the programme includes talks by scientists on climate change.

Dress for a long evening outdoors in deep cold if you go: warm boots, layers and a hat make the music much easier to enjoy.

Videos: Terje Isungset making ice instruments. Winter 2011. (Terje Isungset); Iceconcert live on TV - 2012.Terje Isungset & Mari Kvien Brunvoll (Terje Isungset); ICE MUSIC (NOOOvideo).

For more frozen sound, read about Shout Out Louds’ Blue Ice Record Project, ice as a temporary sculptural material and another creative study of a fragile frozen surface.

Related reading

• ice as a temporary sculptural material
• another creative study of a fragile frozen surface
• Shout Out Louds’ Blue Ice Record Project
• Ice Music in Swedish Lapland: Instruments, Light and a Winter Hall
• Lake Baikal Ice Percussion with irkDarbuka
• Ten Ice and Snow Designs: Hotels, Sculptures and Experimental Spaces

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