Songs of the Ice is an orchestral work about ice. In the Arctic region, the ice breathes with the seasons, swelling in winter and shrinking in summer. Its age-old movement sings a song of its own: slowly surging, unrelenting and covering all beneath it. It tinkles and rumbles, squeaks and laments as our ever-warmer climate breaks Nature’s time-honoured laws, forcing the ice to give way. When I composed the piece, I was expecting our second child, due to be born in the heart of winter when the bitter cold strengthens the ice, making it powerful and solid again, and I was vividly reminded of the time after our first-born. Songs of the Ice also describes the emptiness and reclosing process that begins in a woman’s body when she parts company with the life inside her in giving birth.