The Sound of the Arctic

A daring polar expedition in sound to discover the beauty and terror of a disappearing wilderness.

The polar regions supply some of the planet’s most stunning landscapes, as well as the most startling images of climate crisis. Opening Ultima 2019 at Oslo’s Konserthuset, Lasse Thoresen’s monumental 80 minute multimedia orchestral work Lyden av Arktis (The Sound of the Arctic), written specifically for the Arktisk Filharmoni (Arctic Philharharmonic), is inspired by his travels around the white-out landscapes of Svalbard and Finnmark, and incorporates the visual archives of Tromsø Museum and Norway’s Polar Institute.

The Sound of the Arctic is an acoustic atlas: a musical expedition that reaches as far into the Earth’s interior as it does into our minds and souls. It stands both as a multi-dimensional cultural and historical fable and as an environmental statement — with a breadth that envelops hope, beauty and nature’s untamed forces, beginning with the Arctic wind’s warning whisper, and ending with humankind’s inevitable apocalypse. This work makes one hopeful, anxious, fascinated, frightened and humble, and grateful for the Earth — irrespective of where one might live or be.