ICIYL: Tangram Marks Five Years of Thoughtful and Adventurous Programming at LSO St Luke’s
“During the interval, venue staff positioned a table centre stage for Vivian Fung’s The Ice is Talking for percussionist, ice, and electronics. The piece was commissioned by the Banff Centre in Canada: Fung’s childhood memories of vacations in the Canadian Rockies, and her realisation that the icecap has receded, were the starting point for the work. Tapping, brushing, and scraping the ice blocks with a couple of table knives, Wang created an unforgettable spectacle, against the aural background of an ever-mobile electronic soundscape that sounded like distant, underwater resonance. Wang added amplified vocalisations, concluding in a whisper with the only understandable phrase: “the ice is talking.””