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About Columbia Icefield

Album Review

Columbia Icefield: A Silence Opens

Read "A Silence Opens" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
July 5, 2026

While grief is universal to the human experience, its specific manifestations can vary widely within each person who mourns. One of the challenges of the grieving process involves the difficulty of sharing exactly what one is feeling, and it can thus be an isolating experience--ironically, and painfully, at a time when human connection is most needed. Nate Wooley's latest iteration of his Columbia Icefield project involves his own attempt to come to terms with profound loss, both in the passing ...

Album Review

Columbia Icefield: Ancient Songs of Burlap Heroes

Read "Ancient Songs of Burlap Heroes" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
September 11, 2022

Trumpeter Nate Wooley can create impressive large-scale compositions. His Seven Storey Mountain VI, (Pyroclastic, 2021) is a massive work, dealing with the rights of women, that used fourteen musicians and singers. His group, Columbia Icefield, achieves similar results with just four members, Wooley himself on trumpet and amplifier, Mary Halvorson on electric guitar, Susan Alcorn on pedal steel guitar and Ryan Sawyer on drums plus Mat Maneri and Trevor Dunn guesting on some tracks. This music moves at a glacial ...

Album Review

Columbia Icefield: Ancient Songs of Burlap Heroes

Read "Ancient Songs of Burlap Heroes" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
August 19, 2022

Nate Wooley refuses to make trivial music. Whether the endlessly creative trumpeter and composer is rethinking the relationship between artistic production and community, as on Mutual Aid Music (Pleasure of the Text, 2021), or pursuing ways to re-envision music's spiritual potential, seen most recently on 2020's Seven Storey Mountain VI (Pyroclastic Records), he always provides his listeners with a lot to ponder. This is no less evident with his Columbia Icefield project, which dives headlong into humankind's fraught relationship with ...