Betsey Biggs

Solo evening-length laptop music composition and improvisation weaving field recordings from Greenland with electronic music. 65 minutes.

In 2017, after arriving at the University of Colorado, I began research on what would become my feature-length music-film, MELT: The Memory of Ice (2024). With production funding secured, I headed to Greenland in the summer of 2019 for nearly a month of walks, field recording, and cinematography, witnessing and listening to the melting of arctic ice.

When I returned, I was invited to perform at Brooklyn’s long-running Musical Ecologies" performance series, a monthly symposium on music and sound. I composed and performed an evening-length melodic, glitch-ambient work offering glimmers of what would become the eventual soundtrack of the film. The performance itself wove field recordings of the soundscapes of Greenland – rushing meltwater streams, crackling underwater krill, whale whistles and clicks, the thunderous boom of calving icebergs, the wails of sled dogs, noisy generator drones, and children’s voices — into a powerful sonic experience. The evening ended with a conversation between myself and series curator Dan Joseph.

Although the music for MELT: The Memory of Ice evolved considerably from this composition and eventually became largely focused on the relationship between the vocal and electronic music, I developed several musical ideas while composing this piece which became important to the final soundtrack. In particular, I built synthesizers from my recordings of melting ice using granular synthesis and resonant filters, and developed generative systems organizing both melodic material and my collection of ice calving and sea ice sounds. This project left me ready to begin working on MELT: The Memory of Ice in earnest.

CREDITS

composer and performer: Betsey Biggs

PERFORMANCES AND EXHIBITIONS

2019: "Musical Ecologies," The Old Stone House, Brooklyn, NY, USA.