“An Antarctica that may no longer exist, at least how the composer saw and heard it.”
In 2009, as a participant in the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, SF sound artist Cheryl E. Leonard lived and worked at a research station in Antarctica for five weeks. While there, Leonard collected a trove of field recordings of water, ice, and wildlife—birds, elephant seals, penguins—of which she released a selection in 2010 as Chattermarks: Field Recordings from Palmer Station.
Today, more than a decade later, Leonard returns to the material with the release of Antarctica: Music from the Ice on Other Minds Records. Unlike Chattermarks, which presented the field recordings in their raw state, this album brings the artist’s initial vision to life as a complete musical composition. Interweaving the original sound sources with performances on rocks, shells, and penguin bones (which Leonard crafted into idiophones and sculptural percussion instruments), Antarctica is both an objective capsule as well as a subjective view into a specific place at a specific time. Given climate change and rapidly changing ecosystems—especially at remote places like Antarctica—it’s no wonder the value of a work like this: Nowhere on the planet may ever sound quite like this ever again.
