Icebreaker
Founded by James Poke and John Godfrey in 1989 to play at the new Dutch music festival in York, is a 13-piece group consisting of pan-pipes, saxes, electric violin and cello, guitars, percussion, accordion and keyboards. Icebreaker have established themselves as one of the UK's leading contemporary music interpreters.
As a group of musicians that always plays amplified, it boasts an exciting repertoire which encompasses some of the best known and most influential names in contemporary music today, such as Louis Andriessen, Diderik Wagenaar, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Yannis Kyriakides and Philip Glass. Icebreaker is not easy to categorise or pigeonhole in any musical sense. They create a music that appeals to contemporary classical, rock and alternative music audiences alike. Given their unusual instrumental combination, Icebreaker represent a unique voice in British music making.
Icebreaker have made numerous concert appearances all over the UK and Europe. The ensemble has been invited to appear at most major contemporary music festivals and venues including Meltdown, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the Warsaw, Aarhus, Gent, Grenoble and Budapest festivals, Sonorities in Belfast, the Baltic Gaida Festival and the NYYD Festival in Estonia, as well as a dedicated Icebreaker festival with the Wiener Musik Galerie in Vienna.
Frequent visits to the United States include appearances at New York's Bang on a Can Festival, the Lincoln Center Festival, and a performance at Carnegie Hall with the American Composers' Orchestra in Stewart Wallace's The Book of Five.
In London they have appeared at the ICA, the Place Theatre, the South Bank, the Barbican, the Warehouse, Ocean and the Almeida amongst others. They have appeared on two Arts Council Contemporary Music Network tours of England .
They have been resident ensemble at the Dartington International Summer School for the advanced composition course led by Louis Andriessen and held composition workshops for the SPNM in Bangor and Belfast as well as additional workshops in New York and London. In June 2005 they have taken part in the Popular Music course at GoldsmithsCollege in association with John Paul Jones.
Icebreaker's most recent albums have been released on the New York-based label Canteloupe Music (www.cantaloupemusic.com). 2005 saw the release of Cranial Pavement, including music by John Godfrey, Richard Craig, Yannis Kyriakides and Conlon Nancarrow, as well as the worldwide release of the new version of Michael Gordon's Trance. This 52-minute work was originally released on Argo in 1996 and this classic recording has been completely re-worked and re-mixed for the Cantaloupe version.
Icebreaker's first album Terminal Velocity (music by Andriessen, Gordon, Lang, Gavin Bryars and Damian le Gassick), also originally on Argo, has also just been produced in a remastered version for future release by Canteloupe and is currently available only on this website.
Other albums include Rogue's Gallery (NewTone), with works by Andriessen, Lang, Godfrey, Michael Torke and Steve Martland; a portrait of Diderik Wagenaar (Composers' Voice) and Extraction (between the lines), containing music by le Gassick and Gordon McPherson. Contributions to compilation albums include works by Graham Fitkin (Argo), and Steve Martland and John Godfrey (Century XXI A - M / NewTone). See the recordings page for further details.
Tanzwerk Nürnberg, the West Australian Ballet and the Pacific Northwest Ballet of Seattle have used Icebreaker's recordings for performances. In June 1998, Ashley Page created Cheating, Lying, Stealing, featuring Icebreaker as guest performers, for The Royal Ballet at Sadler's Wells, a programme which was revived in September/October 2004 for Scottish Ballet.
The 2003/4 season saw a major multi-media collaboration with the renowned Dutch ensemble Orkest de Volharding, and singer Christina Zavalloni, entitled Big Noise. The project consisting of four new commissions from leading composers from Britain and Holland, each working in conjunction with a video artist, toured major venues in the UK and the Netherlands.
Other recent projects have included a further performance of The Book of Five with the Bochum Symphony Orchestra in Germany, recording the music to the independent American film Book of Love, and AtaXia, a collaboration with Wayne McGregor's company Random Dance, based on Trance, premiered in Sadler's Wells, London in June 2004 with further performances in Amsterdam, Bruges and New York.