Cheryl E. Leonard builds sonic worlds from the far edges of our planet. For decades, her work has translated the Arctic and Antarctic into intricately layered compositions where technical mastery serves something more profound than documentation. The sounds are crisp and deep, capturing the rugged, unencumbered spirit of places most of us will never experience firsthand. Few sound artists honor and translate the soundscape with Leonard’s blend of reverence and invention, crafting immersive, emotive sound worlds from stones, shells, kelp, and the wild voices of environments in transformation. Her latest album, near the bear, gathers over a decade of High Arctic compositions into a collection that feels both celebration and urgent witness.
near the bear is out now on forms of minutiae. Cheryl’s website is HERE.
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What draws you to work with materials found in polar regions? I’m curious about that first moment when you pick up a piece of driftwood or a shell and hear something musical in it.
I am fascinated by the polar regions because they are likely the wildest places on Earth I will ever visit in person. I’m partial to mountains and oceans, exposed geologies, and stark, chilly locales with few people. Thus, my happy places tend to be alpine and/or polar. Moreover, I enjoy the seemingly limited palette of source materials that Antarctica and the Arctic offer. Sometimes I prefer having fewer options to choose from. This forces me to look deeper and differently, to be tenacious and inventive, like polar lifeforms that exist, and even flourish, in challenging environments.
When I’m searching out natural-object instrument materials, I feel like a little kid on a treasure hunt. I love the way this mindset values common objects: anything can be precious, and everything matters. I gather materials with reverence for the things themselves, and the sites and ecosystems they come from, and I try to have as low an impact as possible. It’s important to note that all my polar objects were collected with special permits, as one is not normally allowed to remove materials from Antarctica or Svalbard.
Though I was only able to collect rocks, bones, and shells in the far north and far south, I still had plenty of eureka moments in these spartan environs. After landing at the natural harbor of Trygghamna in Svalbard, we walked over a jumble of small resonant stone plates, likely weathered into their shattered forms by frost wedging. Accidentally knocking these rocks around with my feet, they rang out with resonant tones, so I gleefully gathered eight mini rock slabs that sounded good together. I later used this lithophone to create drones and melodic material for “glugge.” In Antarctica, one day, I happened upon a couple of limpet shells while wandering around the glacial moraine. Jingling them in my hands, I heard clear, high pitches and immediately knew I would be able to make a scale and play melodies with a set of them. I was also eager to try bowing the shells. This not only worked, but became a key voice in many of my polar compositions, including “thresholds,” “glugge,” and “sila.” The Limpet Shell Spine, which I constructed with ten of these limpet shells, is still one of my favorite instruments to play.
You spent time at 79° North during the Arctic Circle residency. What does it feel like to be that far north, and how did that extreme environment change the way you listened?
It was autumn when I visited Svalbard. Temperatures rarely rose above freezing, and it was often quite windy. Furthermore, over the course of the month I was there, we rapidly lost hours of daylight. Even within the context of the residency, where food and shelter and polar bear guards were provided, just staying warm, functional, and safe outdoors required a significant amount of energy and effort. Often, listening and recording had to take second place to the never-ending fight against frostbitten fingers and toes, or the need for a hot drink to stave off hypothermia. I became skilled at recognizing the exact moment my bare hands had to go back into my mittens to stave off the painful and time-consuming process of thawing them out (not recommended!). When we reached 79° N, we were basically in a blizzard with fairly rough seas. This felt decidedly, stereotypically Arctic. Survival was the priority, and listening was a special treat one might partake of now and then, if one was lucky. This scarcity of opportunity made moments of listening and recording all the more luminous and valuable, much like the experience of beginner’s mind.
In striking contrast to the pace of climate change, Svalbard’s barren landscapes emphasized deep time for me. There were no trees or even tall shrubs to absorb sound and act as reference points for the perception of visual scale. In precipitous cliff faces, layer upon layer of sedimentary and metamorphic stone displayed eons of time. Fossils graced several sites I visited, imprints and shells from long-vanished ecosystems. In the face of these immensely more-than-human timescales, I felt small and very temporary. I wondered how I might adequately listen to geologic time and what it might teach me.
When you’re out collecting materials and field recordings, how do you know what to bring back? Is it intuitive, or are you already hearing compositions as you gather?
Sometimes materials are obviously musical, like the Trygghamna rock slabs, or when streams burble out melodies, or calving glaciers rhythmically punctuate a soundscape, and I would be a fool to ignore them. These objects and moments feel like gifts. They often seed compositions, and I might immediately know how to use them.
In other cases, especially when there doesn’t seem to be a lot to choose from at a particular site, I will simply record or collect anything that’s there and figure out what to do with it (if anything!) later in my studio. I listen back to all the field recordings and take notes on sections of interest. With objects, I put my mad scientist hat on and experiment with playing techniques and microphones, searching for interesting voices. As pieces develop, opportunities to include these voices usually crop up. This could happen rather quickly, or I might have to wait years to find the right spot for a particular sound.
I love the idea of performing on kelpinet with Phillip Greenlief for “moffen.” Can you walk me through how that instrument came to be? What made you think a piece of dried kelp could channel the spirit of juvenile walruses?
When my collaborator, Oona Stern, and I sailed around Svalbard, our ship visited Moffin Island, an important walrus haulout. We were supposed to land on the island, and I had hoped to record walrus there. However, the weather was so bad that we were unable to leave the boat. A few curious juvenile walruses swam out to investigate us, but they didn’t vocalize, and even if they had, it was too windy to record anything on the deck of the ship that day. Despite a lack of primary source material, we still felt compelled to make a walrus piece, as the walrus is a keystone species that is being impacted by climate change and doesn’t get discussed as often as perhaps it should. Consequently, I had to rustle up some alternative walrus sounds.
Research revealed that walruses produce an astonishing range of noises, both above and below water. These include growls, grunts, barks, snorts, soft whistles, rasps, clicks, knocks, taps, and even bell-like tones. Many of these sounds reminded me of extended techniques I’d heard my friend Phillip Greenlief produce on saxophone and clarinet. I’d used dried bullwhip kelp as a flute for many years and seen Krys Bobrowski play kelp like a French horn, so it occurred to me that one should be able to stick a mouthpiece from a reed instrument on the end of a kelp tube and make funny sounds with it. Thus, the kelpinet was born! After confirming my hypothesis at home, I met with Phillip, played him a selection of other people’s walrus recordings, and asked him to re-create as many of them as he could. Of course, during our experiments, he had to joke, “I am the walrus!” Together we developed a repertoire of kelpinet walrus sounds, and these became the foundation of “moffin.”
”glugge” grew from recordings you made through your schooner cabin’s porthole. I’d love to hear about those listening sessions. What were you hearing in the propeller’s rhythms that became an elegy for the Arctic icecap?
The first time we actually got to sail on the schooner (as opposed to motoring via diesel engine), I laid in my bunk with my head next to a porthole, and heard the gorgeous lilt of a slowly rising and falling “whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop.” At the time, I had no idea what was producing those sounds, but later I learned it was the propeller rotating, driven by the forward motion of the ship. Because the porthole had tilted down to just above the waterline, larger waves broke against it periodically, splashing in whorls and/or churning with air bubbles. Since my audio equipment was right beside me, I grabbed a pair of hydrophones and pressed them against the glass. Like a doctor with two stethoscopes, I listened for, and recorded, enigmatic details in the heartbeats of ship and sea.
Under the influence of these hypnotic drones, peering out at the sea through the porthole’s circular frame felt timeless, and I imagined that early polar mariners must have had similar experiences. This brought to mind the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration and the many European expeditions that tried, and failed, to attain the holy grails of the North Pole and Northwest Passage. Now, I thought, as Arctic sea ice diminishes, these objectives will become increasingly attainable. Knowing this would spark a rush to exploit newly-accessible natural resources in the High Arctic, with disastrous impacts on local ecosystems, I was angry and heartbroken. This was my starting point for “glugge.”
There’s something haunting about “mørketid” originating from an improvisation on metal handrails in Pyramiden’s ghost town – especially the last parts of the piece. What was it like being in that abandoned Soviet settlement, and what did those handrails tell you about the people who once lived there?
Wandering around Pyramiden was disconcerting and spooky. I was surrounded by the trappings of civilization, yet a polar bear could have been lurking around any corner, ready to make an afternoon snack of me. The built environment – complete with apartment blocks, sidewalks, lampposts, a kindergarten playground with swings and slides, and even a cultural center that contained music practice rooms – seemed relatively ordinary, and I was inclined to feel safe there. It was a struggle to remain mindful of how vulnerable I actually was.
Sliding my mittens over staircase railings that Pyramiden’s former residents had grasped countless times in the not-too-distant past, what struck me most was how much I had in common with these people. Despite the fact that they had been Russian citizens and resided in this extreme, remote location, their day-to-day experiences had not been very different than mine. I was reminded that, regardless of where we live on Earth, and the many geopolitical conflicts we struggle with, our human commonalities vastly outweigh our differences.
You collaborated with visual artists Oona Stern and Genevieve Swifte on this project. How did working alongside them influence what you heard and recorded? Did their ways of seeing change your way of listening?
Oona’s art encompasses social relationships, including audience participation and interactivity. Working with her encouraged me to explore non-linear ways of listening, and consider how music and soundscapes can be shaped into, or already exist as, parallel worlds and/or paths with a multitude of forks. This is very different than how I normally approach time in a composition.
Though one might think years of field recording would have made me an expert at stillness and focus, the unhurried pacing of Genevieve’s single-shot videos for “sila” and “thresholds” challenged me initially. In order to settle into these ephemeral realms, I had to slow my thinking and listening down, try to channel beyond-human time scales. Only then could I begin placing sounds in relation with the subtly-shifting natural processes Genevieve documented with her camera.
The album took over a decade to complete. What kept you returning to these compositions? Did your relationship to the Arctic change during those years?
Like Antarctic: Music from the Ice, near the bear took 14 years to complete. This is partly a result of my tendency to work on multiple large-scale projects at the same time, but mostly because I care about the Arctic and wanted to make pieces that were nuanced and meaningful, and that takes time. Also, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. What kept me returning to the project was the importance of Arctic environmental issues and being enamored with the place itself and the materials I gathered there. Working on these compositions, especially after time away from them, required mental deep dives back into the world of each piece. It was a way for me to return to the Arctic and revisit sites I may never experience in person again. I still feel transported every time I perform these works.
Over time, I have come to more profoundly appreciate that I was able to visit Svalbard at all (especially since several sites we explored have recently closed to visitation), let alone record audio and collect objects there. I was lucky to experience and document a few parts of this unique place before its natural systems morph beyond recognition. These days, as I read about collapsing ice sheets and Arctic geopolitical machinations, I feel very protective of the region.
The Arctic is, as described in the album text, “the most rapidly-warming region on Earth.” How does that urgency live in the music itself? I’m wondering if there’s a tension between celebration and elegy running through these pieces.
My concern about Arctic climate change is reflected in the musical structure of these compositions, and also informed my choice of sound sources for each piece. For example, “sila” and “thresholds” both gradually build into dissonant, layered climaxes followed by eerie aftermaths. And in “glugge,” the kelp flutes literally run out of breath, like a species fading into extinction.
Certainly, delight and despair coexist in these works. I’m not sure if this is a tension or just an honest reflection of the current state of our planet. There is still so much wonder and beauty out there, and it’s important to recognize and savor it. These things light up our existence and kindle much-needed hope. At the same time, we are witnessing the collapse of ecosystems, and we must acknowledge and mourn these losses.
In “thresholds,” you’re peering through a window in Upernavik, contemplating tensions between domestic and wild. What drew you to that particular threshold? What were you watching or waiting for?
I wasn’t in Greenland myself, but my collaborator, Genevieve Swifte, was. She invited me to create the soundtrack for a video she filmed through one of the windows in the house she lived in there, right on the edge of Baffin Bay. In one long shot, the camera’s focus slowly shifts from the window frame to snowflakes flying just outside the window, then to rocks along the shore, and on to fierce whitecaps breaking on the ocean’s surface. The focus then gradually returns to the building’s interior.
I think what Genevieve found fascinating about this window was that its function was always in flux. Sometimes it fostered the illusion that there was a boundary between domestic and wild. In other moments, it bridged and intermingled the two. I can’t say for certain what she was watching or waiting for, but her emails indicated that there was often something exciting to look out at: “The water there is immediately deep. Icebergs would come right up and smash on those rocks… I also often saw seals in the water through that window…” If that was my window, I would be glued to it!
You work with both natural objects and remnants of human enterprises in the Arctic. How do you think about that relationship between the human-made and the more-than-human in your compositions?
I view everything as intertwined. Sometimes the human-made is in harmony with the more-than-human. Other times, the two are in conflict, and damage occurs. But they always impact each other.
My penchant is to blend human and more-than-human, aiming for a seamless melding of these spheres. The beginning of “thresholds” illustrates this approach, as bowed tones from pyrex beakers and limpet shells fuse into a mellifluous wash of sound. Maybe this is optimism on my part, wanting to model an ideal I dream of us humans attaining. We humans don’t exist outside of nature, so it seems like all one world to me. Moreover, every sound on the album was recorded and/or performed by human me, filtered through my abilities and aesthetics, so there’s nothing in these works that wasn’t intermingled from the get-go.
That said, some of my compositions are about clashes, especially the exploitation of natural resources and the extinction of species. In these works, sounds from human-made things contrast with, intrude upon, or even hostilely replace more-than-human sounds. For example, at the end of “glugge” the roar of the ship’s diesel engine eclipses, then silences all the other voices.
This album is part of a series celebrating the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation. What does it mean to you to have this work exist in that context? Does it change how you hope people will listen?
Having long been fascinated with glaciers, I am thrilled to have near the bear included in this series. I would love for my music to contribute, even in some small way, to the preservation of glaciers. Although glaciers are not the primary focus of near the bear, it is very much an album about the cryosphere, and the presence – or impending absence – of ice underpins every piece.
As scarcity tends to make us value things more, hopefully, understanding that glaciers are disappearing will compel people to listen more closely to their extremely varied and interesting voices. Glaciers have vital roles in ecosystems, and there’s so much we can learn by studying them. I have endeavored to create compositions that are musically interesting, even outside the framework of Arctic climate change, but I hope that considering this larger context adds depth to my music and inspires people to be better stewards of the polar regions and our planet as a whole.
And lastly, to close as always… What are some of your favorite sounds in the world?
Elephant seals – After falling in love with the sounds of Southern elephant seals in Antarctica, I began recording Northern elephant seals in California. From the booming “claps” of dominant bulls to the unruly caterwauling of pups, they have the most outrageous voices!
Natural elements – Wind and water, thunder and lightning, snow and ice: these sounds give me perspective. Their power is humbling, and their variations and subtleties are endless.
Flying sounds – More specifically, sounds from wings of flying creatures. I love the flaps, swoops, whizzes, and flutters of birds, insects, and bats – both the sounds themselves and their spatial movements. I dream of flying (not in noisy machines!), and when these sounds tickle my ears, I almost have a physical sensation of flight, of winging around exploring new dimensions of our planet.
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