Cree Brown's Icescape is the first New Zealand orchestral work to celebrate a passionate engagement with the unforgiving natural world of Antarctica. Icescape reveals some of the various moods of the polar continent, the diverse ice forms and the composer's personal impressions of being there. The orchestra revels in rugged soundscapes - abrasive string timbres, wind instruments that evoke bird calls, primal brass glissandi. Thick blocks of sound contrast with unstable rhythms and expanses of calm. The work's vast timbral spectrum is as vital an element as dynamics or rhythm, its intriguing and memorable sound world conjuring powerful images of this journey to an otherworldly place.
Chris Cree Brown is based at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, where he is a senior lecturer at the School of Music. He is a composer with a diverse range of interests including instrumental concert works, electroacoustic and computer music, music theatre, intermedia art and large-scale musical sculptures designed for public sites.
