Ice Music Crew
Posted: February 13, 2012 Filed under: Arts, Ice Music, Music, Portrait | Tags: arts, cold, festival, geilo, ice, icemusic, music, norway, portrait, snow, wudang mountain Leave a comment »
These 2 hard working gentleman were part of a fantastically strong 2012 Ice Music Crew.
In a mere 7 days, a team of volunteers & professionals constructed the best Ice Music Festival arena and stage yet; a cathedral of snow and ice. And yes, the tippee was used to sleep in, even with nightly temperatures dropping below -30c. Snow is a superb insulator!
Please take a look at my main site to see a portfolio of the whole crew in all there glory.
1975
Posted: February 8, 2012 Filed under: Arts, Ice Music, Music, Portrait | Tags: arts, cold, festival, geilo, ice, icemusic, music, norway, portrait, snow Leave a comment »
As the Ice Music Festival’s artistic director, Terje Isungset invites noteworthy musicians from around the world to join him creating incredible sound with wild ice. This year’s signature ice instrument was the cello and Leo Svensson, a folk hero from Sweden, accepted the challenge of playing it. Bill, of course, gladly accepted the challenge of making it.
Working with a design supplied by Leo, Bill and he worked well into a very, very cold and snowy night to produce the world’s first ice cello. Although still freezing cold, the next morning produced some lovely calm conditions for Leo to start tuning his instrument. Around an hour of fine tuning with Bill and his intricate ice tools, was all that was required to produce a beautifully faithful sound of a cello.
Whilst Leo tuned, I looked for a suitably clean 50mm composition that would really emphasis the uniqueness of both the instrument and it’s location. I quickly settled on this frame, as I felt that the juxtaposition of industrial snowcat (which also built this year’s IMF arena and stage) with the cello’s bow would really sing.
To fine tune the frame, I decided to use the red number 75 to mirror Leo’s red coat and, crucially, anchor the frame. Lighting up a 1000w halogen ‘night sun’ to the rear left of the frame served to add a little warm to the proceedings and also lift the contrast ever so slightly (when the sun is behind cloud, snowy compositions become awfully flat). Throw in a delicate bow position to cut through the left of the frame and bingo, recipe complete.
Once Leo had finished tuning, I showed him the frame on the rear of the camera. I explained that I used the red 75 as an anchor and he looked at me with great surprise; Leo was born in 1975!
And guess what, my brother, Leo, was born in 1975 too. A photograph that was meant to be 
The Fixer Returns
Posted: February 6, 2012 Filed under: Arts, Ice Music | Tags: arts, festival, geilo, ice, icemusic, norway, snow Leave a comment »
It’s gone midnight, -20c and Geilo is deep in snow. A lovely press dinner evening at the Bardøla Hotel has just finished, with taxis on their way to take journalists, a film crew and core Ice Music Festival posse back to their beds.
Bill, Helder, Wolfgang Gehrmann (senior business editor from Die Zeit newspaper in Germany) and I are waiting to share the same taxi. We’ve all hanging around the warm lobby and the banter is flowing effortlessly. Headlights shining into the lobby indicate our taxi’s arrival; and we are surprised to see The Fixer at the helm of the steering wheel. Yep, he had returned in the shape of a taxi driver…roll on lots of warm greetings.
Now at this point, I’d like to mention that I’ve been assigned by both Die Zeit and the Financial Times of London to cover Ice Music Festival 2012 and with both their journalists in Geilo, I feel a little responsible that they receive a warm welcome and good impression of the town and it’s people.
New readers unaware of The Fixer – please read here.
After The Fixer’s out of control pyrotechnic craziness last year, I suddenly have a gut feeling that all hell is going to break loose. We all jump into The Fixer’s spanking brand new Mercedes estate, laden with enough controls and gadgets strewn across it’s dashboard to pass off as Darth Vader’s bathroom. I introduce Wolfgang to The Fixer and we set off.
As soon as we leave the lobby area and with a stark absence of any warning; The Fixer puts his foot to the floor and spins the steering wheel into the biggest power slides, covering the full width of the high snow banked road, regardless of the sharp bends or steep incline. We absolutely crack up.
We get down the mountain at break neck speed and the hit the main road like a scene re-enactment from The Getaway. The Fixer then pulls the sharpest left turn in Ralliart history and flies into a huge, empty lorry park knee deep in snow – chaos reigned. The next few minutes were a total blur of snow and laughter as the car repeatedly spun around and around and around; 360 doughnuts after 360 doughnuts, until we were dizzy.
All sense or illusion of responsibility completely shattered, we all rolled out of The Fixer’s cab and headed back to our apartments.
Wolfgang had officially experienced The Fixer.
Sub Zero Chainsaw Blade Sharpening
Posted: February 1, 2012 Filed under: Architecture, Environment, Ice Music, Portrait | Tags: arts, cold, festival, geilo, ice, icemusic, norway, portrait, snow Leave a comment »
Who on earth would want to sharpen chainsaw blades at night in temperatures of -24c? Bill Covitz, that’s who.
Yep, this year’s Ice Music Festival opens to the public this Friday night and ice carving supremo Bill was up late last Saturday night preparing his collection of blades ahead of his cut crew’s arrival the following day.
Seated on his trusted tool box and wrapped in 3 deerskins, Bill dreamt of his favourite cheeseburger & Halling beer combos…
Let’s Cool January Down…
Posted: January 9, 2012 Filed under: Arts, Ice Music, Music, Portrait | Tags: arts, cold, festival, geilo, ice, icemusic, music, norway, portrait, snow 2 Comments »2012′s Ice Music Festival is fast approaching and 360 Oslo Airport Magazine and Lonely Planet Magazine have published a couple of articles with my photos highlighting the festival’s aural magic. I’m flying out on 24th January to cover the festival and it’s construction for a 3rd year. Bill, Helder & Ivar; don’t forget the Grand Marnier
The frozen omens are supremely good this year too, as the mighty Arve Henriksen will be accompanying Terje Isungset on stage, to perform Terje’s seminal album Iceman Is in full!
Like this:
Arkitektur N
Posted: August 10, 2011 Filed under: Architecture, Arts, Environment, Ice Music, Music | Tags: architecture, arts, cold, geilo, ice, icemusic, norway, snow Leave a comment »
There has been more interest in Norway’s magical Ice Music Festival and viewed from a slightly different perspective too, with an article recently published in Arkitektur N (Norwegian Review of Architecture).
Arkitektur N expressed great interest in the 2011 Ice Music stage and audience arena’s designer Helder Neves (surely the koolest Portuguese architect in Tromsø? and shown above surveying the ground).
They asked Helder to put together some words about his concept and the design details that greatly influenced the stage’s final assembly. Combined with a series of my photographs documenting the stage’s gradual and deceptively simple construction, a great 7 page article was born.
A big thank you to Arkitektur N’s Editor Ingerid Helsing Almaas for all her assistance through to final printed copy.
Please take a peek at the published article as a PDF tearsheet here.
CNN International
Posted: March 5, 2011 Filed under: Ice Music | Tags: CNN, cold, geilo, ice, icemusic, norway, snow Leave a comment »
There’s even more high profile interest in the latest Ice Music Festival as CNN International have published a neat audioslideshow about Terje and his ice instruments.
Speaking of ice instruments; let’s big-up the mighty ice sculptor supremo Bill Covitz, who’s fine chainsaw skills are flown in from chilly Connecticut each winter to create seriously sweet sounding ice instruments. A good example can be found by looking at last year’s Ice Harp on my main site in the portfolio Norway’s Musical Ice.
The Music That Melted
Posted: February 10, 2011 Filed under: Ice Music | Tags: bbc, cold, geilo, ice, icemusic, norway, radio, radio4, snow Leave a comment »
Producer Sara Jane Hall has created a fantastic 30 minute BBC Radio 4 documentary about the Ice Music Festival in Geilo, Norway that I recently covered for a 2nd year. You can listen again on the BBC iPlayer and some of my photos are featured here and here. Sweet.
Pre-dawn -21c on VassFjord
Posted: February 10, 2011 Filed under: Ice Music | Tags: cold, even, geilo, ice, icemusic, norway, snow, snowmobile, vats Leave a comment »
Even Grue Rygg is a very busy man and by my reckoning, he’ll own Geilo by the time he’s 50. To prepare the lake near the tiny hamlet of Vats ready for the ABC World News crew’s arrival, Even had to remove two areas (around 4 sqm) of knee-deep snow. This meant that when the news crew arrived to film the ice extraction process, they were able to cut straight to the juicy bit. The temperature was a perfectly still -21c however after 15 minutes of work Even had to remove a few layers. Suffice to say Even completed the task and was back in Geilo for 10.36am ready for his disabled skiing tutoring class!
The Fixer
Posted: February 6, 2011 Filed under: Ice Music, Portrait | Tags: cold, ice, icemusic, norway, petrol, snow 1 Comment »
Let me introduce The Fixer. Upon arrival at a very snowy Geilo rail station; Bill Covitz, Helder Neves and I were welcomed by a new guy assisting in managing the Ice Music Festival. The constantly smiling and kooly dressed Dane explained that if there was anything, literally anything we needed – just ask.
After looking around our luxury cabin (where we used the brand new sauna to dry out numerous chainsaws every night) we clocked the 50inch flatscreens on each floor but noticed a severe lack of sound system. We called The Fixer – within 30 minutes a brand new BOSE docking station arrived. For then on, it was sourcing 4×4 trucks, cutting equipment, secret roads up the mountain to escape the police with some illegal ice loads, arranging huge discounts on booze, free ski passes, food delivery anyway/anytime; you name it, The Fixer never failed.
And yes, that is a 100kg ice sculpture of a ‘ready-to-pounce’ Tiger on fire….
