An ice instrument has the purity and the clarity of the heavenly realm.

It's not of the earth in the way that a wooden instrument would be.

There's so much potential in ice as an acoustic material.

(classical piano music)

My name is Tim Linhart, and I am the founder of ice music.

Ice music is the music that we make on this orchestra of ice instruments.

The idea first came to me about 21 years ago.

I was an ice sculptor for many years.

Decided one of my sculptures I'd like to build a giant violin.

And I had a friend who was building guitars and he just asked the question:

Gee, I wonder how that one's gonna sound?

And that question has swallowed much of the rest of my life.

The instruments are made of white ice, which is a mixture of snow and water.

It's filled with snowflakes and air bubbles and all kind of different things going on.

To make a single instrument a violin, or viola here, the ice part takes about five or six days.

I can probably build the whole orchestra, here, in about seven or eight weeks.

We have violins, violas, cellos, bass, guitars, mandolins, banjos, drums, and xylophone.

Hold, hold, grazie.

Ice music is not just classical music or experimental music, it's a wide variety of different things.

This winter we'll put on about 45 concerts.

The concert hall has a specific design.

It's one giant ice cave.

The igloo, right now, is 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

It's definitely an issue in ice music that people's fingers get cold.

People play with a variety of different kinds of gloves.

Some people play barehanded, but for me the temperature is, you know, the thing that I really need to make ice music work.

(audience clapping and cheering)

So many people just cannot wrap their brain around a piece of ice making a sound, or a beautiful sound.

When they come in to the ice concert hall, they're just very, very pleasantly surprised and that releases a real, kind of, a high for people.

And then, wow, it's amazing!