Ice Music

EVERY WINTER IN Luleå, Sweden, a remote town located just beneath the Arctic Circle, people are treated to a special concert. It’s not like any concert or recital you might have been to. The concert hall is an igloo, and all the musicians play instruments made almost entirely of ice! These ice concerts have also traveled to places such as Beaver Creek, Colorado, and the Italian Alps.

- Sue Gagliardi

Tim Linhart sculpts instruments made entirely from ice except for the strings and a few small metals and wood parts. Linhart, who grew up in New Mexico and is a stone sculptor in warm months, creates his ice instruments in his garden in Sweden. It takes him about six weeks to create enough ice instruments, called ICEstruments, for a frozen orchestra.

Linhart sculpts icy violins, violas, cellos, and basses for musicians to play beautiful, classical music. He creates ice banjos for country and bluegrass sounds, and ice guitars and giant “bubble drums” for the sounds of rock-’n’-roll. He even sculpts xylophones made of ice, which he sets on bicycle inner tubes to produce amazing sounds!