Quite a while back now, I wrote a piece for moving image as part of my portfolio I was creating at university. It was a ‘wide-eyed’ and adventurous orchestral arrangement, accompanying some footage of Antarctica (the source of which I have never been able to find.) It’s proven a fairly agreeable piece of music amongst those I’ve shared it with – here it is if you haven’t seen it before…
Then, at the end of last year, I was contacted by a nice chap called Valmar Kurol who curates a gallery of Antarctic Art and Music at the Montreal Antarctic Society, Canada. He asked me about the piece, its inspiration and the like, and said he would like to add it to the music discography of his collection. I thought this was a very nice gesture and wanted to draw your attention to this fine body of Antarctic themed work that Kurol has collected – available to view online here: http://www.antarcticart.net/
The music page alone carries what appears to be hundreds of entries, covering symphonic works, choral music and popular song, all inspired by the frozen landscape at the southern pole of our planet. There’s separate collections for film, books and fine art too. Kurol also collaborates with arranger and synth-player Marc-André Bourbonnais on a frosty musical project of their own – ‘Antarctic Arrival‘.
Kurol says that he has been compiling these works for the past 20 years and is motivated by an increase in Antarctic themed music and the fact that ‘[there] are very few themed discs devoted entirely to Antarctica‘. He also muses on what an Antarctic ‘sound’ might be, musically speaking, and says that it ‘includes the beautiful, inspirational, comical, harsh and discordant to the outright boring‘.
What a wonderfully curious collection of art and music! I’m very flattered to be included.
Alex Cottrell 