near the bear

2025 was declared the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation by the United Nations, accompanied by the proclamation of March 21st of each year as the World Day for Glaciers starting this year. As they put it, “this is an opportunity to raise global awareness about the critical role of glaciers, snow and ice in the climate system and the hydrological cycle, and the economic, social and environmental impacts of the impending changes in the Earth’s cryosphere.” To celebrate this decision forms of minutiae presents a series of albums dedicated to glaciers and the acoustic multiplicity of the ice, with field recording works by Marc Namblard, Ludwig Berger, Yoichi Kamimura, Cheryl E. Leonard, and Pablo Diserens. Following Yoichi Kamimura’s “ryūhyō”, the series continues with its fourth album, “near the bear”, a collection of high arctic compositions by composer, instrument builder, and field recordist Cheryl E. Leonard. From walrus encounters at 79° North to watching the surface of the ocean freeze at -35° Celsius, Cheryl E. Leonard’s “near the bear” summons and celebrates the High Arctic. Over a decade in the making, the album investigates the far north via compositions inspired by the unique wildlife, environments, and human histories of Svalbard and Greenland. Three of the album’s five tracks developed out of the 2011 Arctic Circle expeditionary residency in Svalbard, which Leonard undertook in collaboration with New York-based visual artist Oona Stern. During this residency Leonard and Stern explored the western and northern coasts of Spitsbergen Island on a barquentine schooner, collecting materials for a series of art installations, performances, and videos. The following year Leonard began creating soundtracks for two videos shot by Australian artist Genevieve Swifte on the west coast of Greenland. Across these five carefully-crafted compositions, Leonard weaves together sounds performed on natural and human-made objects found in polar regions, with field recordings and site-specific improvisations. Voices coaxed from stones, shells, driftwood, bones, sand, and kelp are entangled with wild soundscapes such as lapping waves, sea ice snaps, howling winds, and squeals from a frozen pond. This sonic synthesis hints at the myriad ways Arctic lifeforms and natural systems interconnect. The composer also brings her music into conversation with the rocky history of human enterprises in the Arctic by including sounds from saw blades, pyrex beakers, remnants of forsaken mining operations, and the ship she sailed on in Svalbard. In the opening track, “moffen”, Leonard calls forth the playful spirit of juvenile walruses with the help of master saxophonist Phillip Greenlief, who performs on kelpinet, a tubular piece of dried bullwhip kelp with a saxophone mouthpiece attached to one end. This frolicking composition invites audiences to marvel at the wide range of sounds walruses produce, and to share the artist’s concern about the future of this extraordinary species. “glugge", a response to increasing industrialization in the Arctic Ocean, developed from recordings Leonard made via the porthole in her schooner cabin. Lilting ostinatos generated by the ship’s propeller build into a gasping elegy for the Arctic icecap and the ecosystems it supports. Ensconced in pulsing tones from bowed glass, “thresholds” peers through the window of a home in Upernavik, Greenland into a tempestuous Arctic storm, contemplating tensions between domestic and wild, human and more-than-human. In the slowly-evolving “mørketid”, which grew out of an improvisation on metal handrails in the ghost town of Pyramiden, Leonard wonders what it would be like to spend polar night in a Soviet coal mining settlement. The album draws to a close in Illulissat, Greenland, at a crystalizing edge of Baffin Bay, with the breath-based composition “sila”, which features bird bones brushed with feathers and bowed limpet shells. Together, these evocative works draw listeners north, sharing sounds, wonders, and stories from the most rapidly-warming region on Earth. Though it may seem seem far away, Leonard’s “near the bear” reminds us that we are all marvelously and irrevocably entwined with the fragile, wild Arctic. • Cheryl E. Leonard is a San Francisco-based composer, performer, and instrument builder whose works investigate natural sites and ecosystems, and human relationships with them. Her projects cultivate stones, wood, water, ice, sand, shells, feathers, and bones as musical instruments, and feature one-of-a-kind sculptural instruments and field recordings from remote locals. She uses microphones and amplification to explore subtle intricacies of sounds, and develops compositions that highlight unique voices and soundscapes while addressing environmental issues such as climate change and extinction of species. Leonard’s musical research has taken her to wilderness areas around the world, including Antarctica and the Arctic. Her works have been presented in concerts and art exhibitions in the Americas, Europe, Japan, and Australasia. Commissions include works for San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Kronos Quartet, and Small Press Traffic. She has been awarded grants from the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, New Music USA, American Composers Forum, and American Music Center, among others.