YES, you read that right – “ice (not nice) music”. Pioneering Norwegian musician Terje Isungset is bringing his mesmerising ice quartet to Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre on Wednesday 19th November, with two more dates in our region, 21st November at St George’s, Bristol, and 22nd at the Turner Sims hall at Southampton University.

Also known as “nature’s percussionist”, the Nordic artist is one of Europe’s most accomplished and innovative percussionists and a pioneer of ice instruments. He performed the world’s first ice music concert inside a frozen waterfall in Lillehammer, Norway, on 11th February 2000.

Featuring voice, ice harp, ice horn, iceophone, ice percussion and ice bass, this concert is a tribute to the most important thing in the whole world – nature – and is based on music from Terje’s albums Winter Songs and Beauty of Winter, alongside newer material from the Ice Quartet album released a year ago.

Terje (pictured), who is famed for his skills in teasing out interesting sounds from natural materials, such as stone and wood, decided to utilise the outstanding natural acoustic properties of ice at that concert in Lillehammer and through calculated trial and error, created an incredible, ethereal and beguiling sound from this most delicate and temperamental resource.

In 2006, he teamed up with Pål Knutsson Medhus to develop the world’s first Ice Music Festival in Geilo, Norway, which grew quickly and attracted the attention of international audiences and media, intrigued by the concept and high quality of sound.

Now he comes with his quartet on a British tour, with a range of incredible frozen instruments from sheep horns to ice horns. This November, he returns for his longest tour yet with an array of frozen percussion and horns joined by an ice harp, ice double bass and the mesmerising voice of Amalie Holt Kleive.