Commissioned by MaerzMusik / Berliner Festspiele, produced by MaerzMusik / Berliner Festspiele and DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. Susie Ibarra is a 2024/25 Music & Sound fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin-Program. This project has been developed during her residency in Berlin with curatorial support by Dahlia Borsche and Sebastian Dürer.

​

CHAN: Sonnets and Devotions in the Wilderness comprises six kundimans by Filipinx-American composer, percussionist and sound artist Susie Ibarra. The kundiman is a genre of traditional Filipino love song, in this case an expression of Ibarra’s love for nature, dedicated to landscapes that are dear to her after having lived or spent time near them: the migrating beech trees of the medieval forests of Germany; the Warsaw-Berlin ice-marginal spillway; Lake Tsongmo, a sacred glacial lake in the Himalayan Mountains of North Sikkim, India; and the Pasig River along the Manila Bay in Luzon. Historically, this river in her homeland was culturally important as a source of water and a route for travel. Despite the fact that it was declared biologically dead in 1990 after decades of industrial development, more recently it has seen a revival, with various species of fish, birds and trees flourishing once again. 

​

In addition to composition, Ibarra’s interdisciplinary artistic practice includes performance, mobile sound-mapping applications, multichannel audio installations, recordings and documentaries. As well as co-running the label and publisher Habitat Sounds and leading ensembles such as Talking Gong, she works to sustain indigenous and traditional music cultures, advocates for the stewardship of glaciers and freshwaters, and engages in music and social education with women and girls in Morocco. For CHAN – which is the artist’s middle name, meaning “meditation” – Ibarra worked with poets Don Mee Choi and Logan February, with whom she shared a residency as part of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. Their words complement the six sonnets and devotions composed for ensemble, voice, speaker trees and baroque pipe organ. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​