MSUM Musicians Use Ice-Made Percussions For Outdoor Performance

The half-hour concert was part of the University's "Why Not Winter Wednesdays," a series of outdoor events in the winter months

MOORHEAD, Minn. (KVRR) – The middle of February brings frigid temperatures to the area. It might be too cold for most outdoor activities but on the campus of MSUM, Dr. Kenyon Williams wanted to find something that could get people outside.

“About five years ago, I was watching on Facebook some videos of people performing on frozen lake ice in Siberia and I thought, ‘Ah looks like that would be fun’ and started thinking, ‘I wonder if we can do that here in Fargo-Moorhead,'” Williams said.

Turns out they were able to do something similar in the middle of campus: a concert involving custom-made ice percussion instruments. It’s part of the university’s “Why Not Wednesdays” series, events designed to take place outdoors.

“These are all things that bring people together and so the opportunity just to create music again and have people come and celebrate that together, to me, is just a wonderful thing,” he said.

And the performance itself wasn’t scripted

“It’s hard to get live music and, like, live performing things especially with COVID going on”, said freshman Eli Cole. “All of the stuff we did there was all improvised. A lot of us were kind of just bouncing ideas off of each other whether you saw them or not. I really was surprised with the turnout we had today. I didn’t think a lot of people were going to show up with how cold it is but we had a really good turnout.”

“It’s wonderful to be able to do this and share this with audiences because audiences are few and far between this day in age,” Williams said. “And it’s great to be able to perform something that takes advantage of our Minnesota climate rather than runs from it.”