Nansenbreen glacier Photo: Tom Warner

Artica Svalbard and Polar Jazz invite you to an evening of sound, science, and shifting ice.

What does a glacier sound like as it calves, drips, fractures, and recedes? What can seismic pulses, melting rhythms, and underwater echoes tell us about a world in transformation? Glacier Lamentation asks us to listen differently—to hear climate change not as data or distance, but as vibration, resonance, and presence.

Through a pioneering fusion of field recordings, glaciological research, and electroacoustic composition, the project transforms raw environmental material into immersive soundscapes. Ice becomes both instrument and archive; melting becomes both score and warning. Rather than offering solutions, Glacier Lamentation opens a space for attunement: an encounter with the fragile, powerful, and disappearing bodies of ice that shape Svalbard’s past and define its uncertain future.

The performance brings together musicians and researchers in improvised dialogue with the glacier itself. Calving bursts, subglacial rumblings, and creaking ice sheets form the foundation for a musical language that is as intimate as it is planetary. What emerges is not a documentation of loss, but an invitation to listen—to experience climate as sound, time as vibration, and vulnerability as compositional force.

Glacier Lamentation is led by Torben Snekkestad and Morten Qvenild, with research fellow Anja Lauvdal, and developed through collaborations with the Norwegian Academy of Music, the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), the Norwegian Polar Institute, and Translating Nature. These partnerships form a unique platform where environmental knowledge, artistic experimentation, and societal reflection converge.

For tickets and full programme details visit the Polar Jazz website here.