Collaborators
Icebreaker - Live music
AtaXia; photo Ravi Deepres
Founded by James Poke and John Godfrey in 1989 to play at the new Dutch music festival in York, Icebreaker is a 14-piece group consisting of panpipes, saxes, electric violin and cello, guitars, percussion and keyboards. Icebreaker has established itself 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.
Icebreaker's concert appearances span the whole of the UK and Europe as well as the USA. The ensemble has been invited to appear at most major contemporary music festivals and venues including Meltdown, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the Aarhus, Gent and Budapest festivals and the NYYD Festival in Estonia.
Tanzwerk Nürnberg, the West Australian Ballet and the Pacific Northwest Ballet of Seattle have used Icebreaker's recordings for performances. In June 1998, Icebreaker appeared as guest performers with The Royal Ballet for a ballet by Ashley Page called Cheating, Lying, Stealing (music by Michael Gordon and David Lang). More recent performances include a dedicated Icebreaker festival with the Wiener Musik Galerie in Vienna, a tour of Holland and further concert performances in Belgium, Poland, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the UK. 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. Other projects include a further performance of The Book of Five with the Bochum Symphony Orchestra in Germany and recording the music to the independent American film Book of Love.
For Wayne McGregor | Random Dance, Icebreaker has performed Michael Gordon's original score in AtaXia.