CHAN Water Opus 1-7  is the working title of an opera installation in development for performance and installation to be composed by Susie Ibarra with the libretto by Jeffrey Yang

 

The piece will be composed for recorded spatialized sound compositions and for

sinfonietta+abridged chorus and soloists, and performative sculptural instruments.

 

The Sinfonietta will include:

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violins, cello, contrabass, clarinets, bassoon, trumpet, horn , trombone, percussion,  

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with soloists:

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Talking Gong trio – Claire Chase (flutes) Alex Peh (piano and pipe organ) Susie Ibarra (percussion)

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Abridged Chorus with two soloists

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Speakers to play in the hall installative recording

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​Dinosaur Monument

​Inspired by several historical natural and built landscape instruments made from and for water, CHAN Water Opus 1-7 contemplates ancestral non-anthropogenic and magical life inside and around these giant instruments that come from the Jurassic, Eocene and current Holocene Eras.  The river systems from ancient Uinta Lake in the Utah and Colorado northwest canyons flows into the Colorado River and out to the Sea of Cortez. 

 

With poet Jeffrey Yang, I am composing a score that steps into the magical lives of ancient animals, such as the Eocene era river turtles and dawn horses of the canyons, out to the sea of Cortez where today the vibrant marine life continues with whale sharks and mobula rays as some of the inhabitants.  I have been recording in the ancient and current water landscapes of Eocene Era Fantasy Canyon, Jurassic Era Dinosaur Monument National Park, and will be recording near La Paz and Baja California Sur, at the Sea of Cortez, separated from the Pacific 5.3 million years before.

 

How have these landscapes shaped our beings through the movement of sound in water and stone? 

Who were the animals that lived here before and what is left for its current descendants?

What do they bring through the passage of many historic water river systems? 

 

With generous project support from Creative Capital Awards 2025, this September I was on field recording a percussive score with these living water landscapes. Joining me for the field percussion recording were :  Jake Landau, Ellie Rui Weinberg, Jen Yakamovich, Putu Tangkas Hiranmayena and sound designer and recording artist Alec Fellman.​ These pieces will be edited and mixed for installative sound. We have 3D scanned Fantasy Canyon pin which I will create models of lithophones to be played.

 

Fantasy Canyon was created from an ancient lake in the Eocene Era some 30 million years ago which became hardened rock formations, a small canyon that contains sounding lithophones. Fantasy Canyon is also visually extraordinary with dripping sandstone formations.   I wrote several percussion pieces that were recorde as ensemble among the lithophones 

 

Dinosaur National Monument Park in this area which has magnificent resonance in between the canyon walls was formed by the Green and Yampa river systems which during the Jurassic Era 150 million years ago brought large dinosaurs into these canyon areas where their fossils now remain.  These pieces were recorded along the canyon walls and on the water of the confluence of the Yampa and Greene rivers.