Ice serenades

By Nicole Findlay

Jesse Stewart is grateful for the return to frigid temperatures. To combat the recent balmy weather, he had to purchase a large freezer in which to preserve his musical instruments. 

Stewart, a professor of music in the School for Studies in Art and Culture, has been designing and building roughly a dozen musical instruments, mostly percussion, made of ice. These will be used for performances in Toronto and Ottawa in celebration of WinterCity and Winterlude.

“Music is inherently ephemeral – it exists in the moment that we experience it and then vanishes,” said Stewart. “At a time when we hear media reports of melting icecaps and receding glaciers, there is something poetic and poignant about using ice to make music.”

Working in his backyard, Stewart has been using moulds, saws, chisels and even a blow torch to fashion the instruments. The warm weather of late has been a challenge – melting instruments every time the thermostat climbed above zero.

“Tuning them is easy enough, but getting them to maintain a particular pitch is quite difficult, as even the slightest bit of melting changes the tuning,” he explained.

He has also been composing original music specifically geared to ice instruments.

“Some of the instruments will be played with marimba mallets, others with gloved hands, and some will be ice on ice,” said Stewart. “A few will be performed by blowing into them but in addition to being quite cold on the lips, this causes the instruments to melt, so I’ll use this technique sparingly.”

The Jesse Stewart Ensemble will perform Glacialis, Latin for “frozen” or “icy”, at Winterlude’s opening ceremonies at the Museum of Civilization on February 5.  They will also perform on February 7 in Ottawa. However, the first performance will be held at Toronto’s WinterCity festival in Nathan Phillips Square on January 31.

The Jesse Stewart Ensemble comprises Stewart, Michele McMillan, and two Carleton music students, Jamie Holmes and Fraser Holmes. The ensemble was created to perform music Stewart composed for instruments he has built from stone, wood, metal, and fire, and water.

Glacialis was commissioned by the National Capital Commission and the city of Toronto after last summer’s Canada Day celebration.