The Ice Suite
One afternoon, when Ken and I had been meeting and working together for a while I played a riff on the keyboard that I first recorded as a fragment years before while involved in com.passion. It had been inspired by a small article in the newspaper . It was about how the body of Scott of the Antarctic, buried under snow for over 80 years since his death, had by the power of glacial drift been slowly moving towards the destination that eluded him in life- the Base station where he and his men would have found shelter and safety. His body could be tracked under the ice by Satellite and would one day be expelled into the sea and drift to the bottom of the ocean. It started me pondering on the bravery of Antarctic explorers and how it was similar drive that sent astronauts off into the cold, vastness of space.
The Passage /World Mission
After writing this piece I had the opportunity to visit Hobart while the MONA was in its final stages of construction. I was part of a university party being given a guided tour and was struck by the potential of the MONA for performances of new and interesting work. They said they were open to ideas.Afterwards , pondering the connection between Scott and Hobart, I announced casually to some friends over coffee that I was thinking about developing a soundscape piece to do with Scott’s final days . Whereupon my coffee companions announced they had the original diaries of Scott at home and would I like to borrow them! They were the editions published just after his remaining crew returned, before the advent of the First World War blew away all their sacrifice and heroism with a larger picture of destruction.
They were complete, unabridged, and filled with drawings and photographs.
Packed carefully into hand luggage and transported home, they were the research and inspiration for all the scripts I wrote for what was to become known as ‘The Ice Suite’
The making of 'co.sonance'
Ken and I had already met Cye and knew he would be wonderful in this project. But since first asking Cye to work with us I hadn’t seen him for some time. Turned out he had been moving house and at a chance meeting at the Chiropractors door ( musicians have to look after their backs!) he reaffirmed his commitment. This left me with the issue of imagery. I knew how I wanted this production to look and I had enough to do with writing music and words and steering the development. I approached Grayson Cooke,then head of Digital media at southern Cross University, who also had been a performer at Sound Crucible nights. As luck would have it, he had already a swag of fabulous ice and snow images he had been working on while in Canada. Grayson performed live by digitally mixing and processing images and he was keen to add lots of Scott imagery to the show so he used dozens of images taken on the Scott expedition by Ponting. You can see some of these below.
First however, Cye came over to listen to my ideas and set down this perfect piece of emotionally beautiful music which we refined and used throughout the piece. This is one take, no overdubs, just Cye using his magic pedal box to loop, sample and lower his violin an octave or two.
Cye’s soliloquy
Images by Ponting from the Scott exhibition
Creation of the Ice Suite
Writing and refining The Ice Suite actually two years. But during that period we did a number of 20 minute stripped down versions as we tested out our presentation. The First of these was at Still@thecentre music night in Byron Bay. The response to the music and imagery was positive so we kept going, with more confidence we were on the right track. We also performed at the Bangalow Classical Music festival ( without Cye who was touring – we patched in his part into the soundscape) , then the Byron Writers Festival. This was a funny experience as we were the support act for Kamahl. I don’t who was more taken aback in the audience, his fans or ours! The shorter version was easy to book into other events, the final version we knew would run to nearly an hour so it had to be the main feature. From the start of this project we were aiming to perform it on the 100th anniversary of Scott’s death at the MONA in Hobart. This would also coincide with 100 years of Antarctic exploration celebrations centred on Hobart and were were keen to present our recreation of Scott’s last days to a science based audience .
At this point we were in need of a promotional video to give an idea of the piece and Grayson made this one with some of his beautiful ice images. The live shots were from a performance we gave at SCU. I have pasted in a review we were sent afterwards.
One hundred years to the day - The MONA performance
Performing at the MONA was an enormous undertaking. They had no formal theatre space, so after consultation with them it was decided to convert the Nolan Room . This meant bringing in everything on the day, projectors, seating, staging area etc. We were intrigued to be sharing our floor space with several enormous mounds of coal, part of the installation there and backed by huge , thick hawsers. It was all highly appropriate given that a lot of Scott’s problems started on his journey down to the Antarctic when they were beset by a terrible storm which necessitated the jettisoning of most of their coal which was used for fuel. This meant Scott and his part landed a full 1000 miles short of their intended landfall and had so much further to cover to the South Pole. We could never have staged The Ice Suite in Hobart without the help of a number of local people who rallied around ferrying people and gear and helping bump out all the seating. But the biggest thank you has to go to Artistic director of the MONA Brian Ritchie ( of Violent Femmes fame). As our show was 56 minutes in its final version we thought it would be good to have a 20 minute first act. I knew Brian was an accomplished Shakuhachi player and asked if he would like to set the tone by peforming first.
The Mona performance area
Brian Ritchie
The heading probably should say ‘Brian Ritchie: best support act ever’ – when I asked Brian to play before us I hadn’t reckoned on what amazing energy and originality he would bring to bear on the piece he prepared for us.
Brian was aware of a famous Japanese connection to the Scott saga – at the same time as Scott and Amundsen were battling to be the first to reach the South a pole, a little known Japanese explorer Nobu Shirase was also making his way there.
Defeated by lack of suitable equipment and bad weather he turned back. He later stayed in Melbourne for some time and left his sponsors there his ceremonial sword But he took back with him to Japan a beautiful Shakuhachi composition written by one of his party.
Brian was already aware of the piece when invited by Co.sonance to perform and incorporated the original composition into an entirely new piece. As the composition was more a haiku musically, Brian took the component phrases and had them lettered in Japanese musical notation onto 30 odd identical pieces of paling like timber. After entering the performance space down the grand staircase he moved about the room scattering the pieces at random around on the floor. Then he proceeded to step up to each piece in turn and play what was written there, and improvised the entire composition.The audience were enchanted and it created the perfect tone for us to deliver The Ice Suite afterwards.
The song 'Infinity'
In the middle of all the swirling soundscapes of blizzards and violins there is a song – ‘Infinity’, sung by Elyjah McCleod. This might seem unusual in such a piece, but the song has a special significance.
Scott took a wind up gramophone with him ( and a piano!) and every night would play classical selections to cheer his men. Like much of their supplies this was a sponsorship, hence the wonderful picture of the dog listening in on the one specially dedicated to the expedition. I had written the song 8 years previously when I first wrote the middle section of the piece and though it would be interesting to insert it at the point when Scott is lying, dying slowly in his icy tent with the last of his men. In the show I processed the track to make it sound like a scratchy old 78rpm, coming at you from across space and time.
Infinity performed by Elyjah McLeod
Elyjah McLeod
I asked the wonderful Elyjah McLeod to sing this song as I had seen him perform several times and knew he had just the right voice. He asked me how I wanted him to sing it. I told him to imagine he was wearing a khaki uniform and was standing beside a piano – it seemed to do the trick!
Oamaru Steampunk Festival
The Ice Suite is a festival piece- it’s not something you can perform down the pub. So I tried to get the group booked into many festivals around Australia but failed to get a gig. Then the opportunity came up to perform at the World Steampunk Festival held every year in Oamaru South Island New Zealand. As Scott was the last of the great Victorian Explorers, and as Oamaru had quite an historical connection with the Scott saga, this seemed appropriate .
So if you are going to a Steampunk festival you have to make some effort to look thematically suitable, we hired and borrowed some costume and set up a photo shoot – except it was about 30C and 98%humidity, even at 8pm when we shot this! Add some lighting, and instant band soup!
Festival images
The Steampunk festival has patrons who spend literally hundreds of hours constructing their costumes, and the back story to each costume as you create your own mythology in a Steampunk World. I can’t resist putting just a few of the incredible get ups here. If you ever get the chance go to this festival. From Teapot races to flying competitions it is a heap of fun . Hint: dress warmly: The Fire and Ice night was zero degrees!
We hadd a heap of fun at the Steampunk festival. We did performances, workshops, friend Warren Taylor came along for the ride and delivered a lecture ( with slides) of the importance of Scott’s scientific discoveries. After we returned from N.Z, the following email was forwarded to us:
“Tucked away in the programme of events at the May Steampunk NZ Festival was a real treasure. Here in Oamaru on a visit from the UK, I was reminded of the first film I ever saw as an 8 year old in post-war Britain – Scott of the Antarctic, a figure forever imprinted on my mind in film and story and music. How could I imagine that 66 years later I would stumble upon the Ice Suite, an exquisite evocation of the last days of the same Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his companions?
This was a contemporary improvisation in music, digital film and voice, not on the epic scale of the cinema screen, but as chamber music, a live performance for a small audience in the Inkbox Theatre at Oamaru Opera House. That is not to say that the impact was any the less. This work, an hour long, took us into the icy fastness of human endurance and out with the transcendent human spirit to the universe beyond the stars.
How was it done? It’s hard to say. The music of the string players, violin and viola, shimmered in the cold, lamented the loss and took us to places beyond our imagination. At the same time the images before us were of ice and snow, huge cliffs and vast tracts, morphing into old photographs moving across the screen, of men pulling sleds, maps showing their progress and how near they were to getting home, billowing tents and howling gales, sea and sky. Through the voice of the narrator, with us in the room, we heard passages from Scott’s diary, inventories of items required for the expedition, the poetry of lament. Woven through were threads of electronic sound bringing a sense of isolation, the vast, cold spaces of earth and sea, sky and stars. Scott and his companions died heroically; their inner journey took them to a place beyond, which is explored in this symphonic creation.
The news of the loss of the expedition was brought first to Oamaru, from where it was telegraphed to the world. This is a local story. If you ever get the chance to see and hear this work, then grasp it. The Ice Suite is extraordinary. All thanks to Karena Wynn-Moylan who wrote the piece and spoke the words, to Ken Naughton and Cye Wood who played violin and viola, and to digital artist, Grayson Cooke. Find them on www.theicesuite.com”
Sally Jones
Thanks Sally. And here is the New Zealand co.sonance members and crew just before we went off to our 4pm performance. The one Sally attended.
Byron Bay Show live recording
Although we had performed shortened versions of The Ice Suite locally we had never delivered the entire piece to a local audience. We also had been unable for one reason or another been unable to record the performances live.The performances were half pre programmed ( the soundscapes) and then live. While my script ( written by me not Scott!) didn’t vary, the parts that Cye, Ken and Grayson played could be improvised at certain points. So each performance was a little different. So we decided to do a last show and record it ( and also we filmed it). So there is actually an Ice Suite CD. ( But not a DVD, Grayson prefers to keep his performances of image mixing unique. This performance took place before we went to the Steampunk Festival.
CD cover
You can order a CD if you like, I will just mail you one. Or you can just lie back and close your eyes and listen below to the entire piece. This is a live performance, so there is the occasional odd audience noise. We always divide the Ice Suite into three parts: Terra Nova - where Scott and his men set out across the sparkling , ice filled sea to land facing a white nothingness; 'Dog Sled' - which is the race across the ice to reach the South Pole first; and 'The Passage'- which is Scott's death and then journey, frozen through the ice to the water, as tracked by satellite. Because the whole file is too large to load on this site I have divided into into those three sections. Just click over as fast as you can so there's no gap!
Terra Nova
Dog Sled
The Passage
This is a final video, put together by Grayson and including footage from other sources. It’s was our last word on this project which spanned over four years, It was such a privelege to work with Ken, Cye and Grayson on The Ice Suite.It could only have come about through collaboration .
It took nearly two years to organise the Oamaru Opera House show, and afterwards we all moved on to other personal projects. Cye formed a band with his sister called ‘Cave in the sky’, made a soundtrack with Lisa Gerrard from Dead Can Dance for for a television series and went to Berlin. Grayson continued to develop his mesmerising video installations and collected various awards overseas, Ken went back to his beloved piano and continued to practise. I had made a three part, three hour long radio documentary called ‘Memories of Sarajevo;. It won a national CBAA award and so I entered it in the New York world’s Best Radio Shows awards. While in Oamaru I checked my mobile every day to see if I had got anywhere ( I knew I was a finalist before leaving.) The band had a running joke about me going to New York next to collect the award. The day after we returned I found I had won Bronze. Did I go to New York? Better move onto this next project ‘Memories of Sarajevo’ to see.