Erland Cooper interview: The composer who melts hearts with icy music

I FIRST met musician, composer and artist Erland Cooper outside London’s Barbican Centre in late spring. He had been standing for 12 hours next to his 2.4-metre-high ice sculpture, Glacier. This thawing, crystalline monolith reflected the climate change themes and fragile beauty of his fourth-and-latest album, Folded Landscapes.

“It was a kind of slow protest… a gentle way to bring conversations together,” explains Cooper when we next meet, some months later. “I love that people just came up and sat beside me, picked at it, talked about it.”…