This album, a musical collaboration with Michael Stibor, found inspiration from a semi-circumnavigation voyage of West Antarctica that I participated in over February and March, 2015. From Bluff , New Zealand, the expedition ship sailed via the subantarctic Campbell Island into the Ross Sea and McMurdo Sound, the entry point to Antarctica for many expeditions of the Heroic Era of Antarctic exploration during the early 1900s. Today, the Ross Sea is one of the few seas left with as yet relatively small environmental damage from human activities. From there, along the Ross Ice Shelf, the largest ice shelf in Antarctica, the route went through the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas to the Antarctic Peninsula, the region of most of present-day Antarctic tourist activities. After a crossing of the Drake Passage, the cruise ended at Ushuaia, Argentina aft er a travel distance of about 6,000 miles. The themes and musical impressions, further described in the individual track notes, were based on the various remarkable places and their histories, encountered in the Ross Sea area. I am grateful to Michael Stibor, without whose many musical talents this album would still be just an idea, and to two exceptional vocalists, Shelsey Jarvis and Carole Desmarteau who appear on the final two tracks. A special thank you goes to Dr. Paul Dalrymple, an American micrometeorologist who overwintered at the Little America V base on the Ross Ice Shelf and at the South Pole Station over the 1957-58 International Geophysical Year, whom I consider to have been a mentor to me in things Antarctic over the last 20 years.
– Valmar Kurol (Montreal, Canada, August 2016)
When Valmar first approached me about writing music for this album, I was immediately struck by his passion for the project, and openness to explore new musical avenues. The opportunity to compose music for areas of Antarctica that so few (if any, in some cases) have written music about was a composer’s dream. Suffice to say that I did not hesitate to accept. For those who are familiar with the regions explored here musically, I hope we have done them justice. For those who have never been to Antarctica, may this album bring you that much closer.
– Michael Stibor, (Montreal, Canada, August 2016)
