The Swedish Lapland town of Luleå near the Arctic Circle is home to the coolest orchestra you’ve (possibly never) heard of, where musicians play hand-carved ICEstruments (instruments made out of ice, naturally) inside a gently lit, pulsing, rainbow-colored igloo concert hall.
It’s called Ice Music and it’s the brain-child of ice sculptor Tim Linhart, who, 20 years ago, carved a string bass out of ice and was shocked at how beautiful it sounded.
“I skied all the way down to the village and I told them what had happened to me and how excited I was,” Linhart says in the video, which was filmed by P2 Photography. “They pretty much thought I was a kook.”
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Kooky or not, the ice orchestra is undeniably unique and its array of stringed and percussion ICEstruments are ethereal and beautiful to experience.
Playing frozen instruments presents many challenges, as you might imagine, which is why Linhart accommodates for temperature by playing in a double-domed igloo, which allows the warmth from the audience to rise up and away from the instruments, so they don’t melt mid-performance, which would be super awkward.
Linhart says the experience is akin to magic—“unbelievable but happening”—and we can’t help but agree.