I wrote this work to be an achievable but fun programatic piece for younger band - and also (as I often like to) giving some extra love to the percussion section.

A Crack in the Ice was inspired by a short piece of video footage of an ice climber on a wall of ice, hundreds of feet above safety but surrounded by breathtaking mountains and snow. Each progressive movement upwards involved using his pickaxe to hit the ice and find a hold in the surface above him, before painstakingly hauling himself upwards. All is well until he strikes one too many times into the wall above; there is a sudden crack and the whole ice wall that he is on breaks away from the mountainside and falls. Miraculously he rides the broken shard of ice as it slides down the face of the cliff to a resting place hundreds of feet below the point where he was only moments earlier. He is immediately surrounded by relieved colleagues and friends, shaking their heads in disbelief of what they have just witnessed while celebrating the lone climbers remarkable survival.

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