I think amidst navigating an anthropogenic world that is delicate, fragile and very beautiful yet also at the same time very devastating and alarming; music,art and nature has held a place of refuge and love. It also holds as well naked truths with voices to reckon with. These things are teaching so much essential goodness to remind us of what we are made of and what we can mirror.
Hoping that each of you find time to be with loved ones, rest, celebrate, and reflect on recent memories to see where life led each one in the last year. Through the hard moments and gentler ones, I hope love from different aspects of life can hold each person in healing, celebrating and learning as we continue into the new year.
I am grateful to have had time to be with old and new friends, meet many wonderful new friends and colleagues on fellowship with the DAAD in Berlin, Germany, and also in the US, Europe and India, and to be with mentors and mentees and my dear family across the world in this last year. I don’t take this effort lightly from everyone involved and it gives me strength to carry the love, friendship and energy into 2025 with positivity and light.
Some of my takeaways this year while encountering and learning from the urban and migrational birds, insects, foxes, glacial water, two rivers , high altitude rainforest life and medieval forests, with several projects and artists connecting to this. ( so many people and moments this last year, not only these ,that I am grateful for, thank you !)
- with love, Susie Ibarra
BIRDS and BIRDSONGS
Birds and humans have more things in common than we might think. Also songbirds have a lot in common with musicians too.
Participating as a commissioned artist for Artistic Director, Kaoru Watanabe’s Interwoven Bloodlines Festival with Baryshnikov Arts Center, I researched the migration paths from listening to the stories of artists, their families and ancestors. I learned of the connections of their ocean and regional birds, and that like birds, we are not born with all of these songs. We learn them, and travel often to great distances to study and learn new music to return and share or perform them.
It was wonderful to create a Migration SoundPack for Splice Soundscapes with Jake Landau. We recorded synths and drumbeats entirely from migration sounds and particularly bird migration sounds. Can you tell which is electronic and which is natural sound? Nature has an uncanny way to blur these areas of hearing. These field recordings were recorded in two UNESCO sites, one Doñana National Park in Andalucía Spain, and one in Jasmund National Park , along the Baltic Sea in north Germany. Field guide and ornithologist Javi Tosar guided us and a group of 6 artists in Doñana National Park. Behavior Ecologists Heribert Hofer and Ornithologist Marion East advised us on field for the Baltic Sea in Germany.
Jasmund National Park on Rügen Island, Baltic Sea
Migrating Beech Tree Forest at Jasmund
Jake Landau recording at Spyker Schloss, Rügen Island
Im recording, this time briefly with my dog Appa at Spyker Schloss, Rügen Island
Rügen Island, Baltic Sea
Returning back to the Baltic Sea , Jake Landau and I led a Rhythm in Nature residency for artists which included Yamil Resc, Tre Abalos, Jen Yakamovich and Trey Cregan investigating tree fractals, fresh water rhythms and birdsongs of migrational and regional birds in the Baltic and Berlin.
Walking along the Baltic Sea in Jasmund National Park
On the Baltic Sea
Jen Yakamovich recording in Berlin tree fractals in Tiergarten
Yamil Rezc recording tree fractals in Berlin in Tiergarten
Birds and Humans know and will return to homesites in exact spots when returning from long travels or flight) - Día Museum commission with Poet Jeffrey Yang, In Light of Water, Birds Take Flight for two reciting poets, percussion and participatory orchestra. Like poets and musicians and the participatory orchestra of non musicians conducting and performing with us, birds have their calls and responses , participatory nature of flocking and flying together in formations that evolve in the immediate moment, like ensemble
INSECTS
Regardless of size and scale, insects as we might imagine or see or hear, can live larger than life lives. Here imagined in INSECTUM album released this February 2024 with Jeffrey Zeigler and Graham Reynolds.
Jeffrey Zeigler at sound check in Austin Texas for INSECTUM album release premiere .
Graham Reynolds at sound check for INSECTUM album release premiere in Austin , Tx.
My set up with Graham’s wonderful bass drum as my second bass drum for INSECTUM album release premiere in Austin Tx.
Here insects are seen and recorded with the Ukrainian Welcome School at TXL Tegel, and Nurtingen Grunschule of Kreuzberg, Berlin, recorded as a miniature city on grassland field of endemic heather with GrunBerlin, Bauhaus Archiv Museum, DAAD in collaboration with cultural anthropologist Carsten Cremer and our sound and teaching artist team, on a Rhythm in Nature teaching research project in Berlin last fall. Included here on the artist team are Jake Landau, Trey Cregan and Jen Yakamovich, Rhythm in Nature Artists.
Maria holding a grass hopper at Tegel Field, Berlin
Valeria recording grassland at Tegel Field , Berlin
Children from the Ukrainian Wilkommen TXL School recording on field at Tegel , Berlin
3. SACRED GLACIAL LAKE
Emerald colored lakes and larger than I might imagine, bamboo forests grace the mountains of the Himalayas. In these giant forests birds do not shy away when I walk along the forest with a team. I learned how low pitched bamboo can sound in the high mountain forest and the extreme different sound of a quiet sacred glacial lake and its rivers rushing down the mountain. Upon having conversations I realize that the last 7 years we have been documenting at different points because of chaotic climate, the exactformer horseback paths of his Holiness the Dalai Llama and his brother Penchan Llama, Buddha of Boundless Light from South China , through Sikkim and down to Varanasi and Sarnath India
Sitting and recordings at Sacred Glacial Lake Tsmongo
Amy Reed recording at Sacred Glacial Lake Tsmongo
Jake Landau recording at Sacred Lake Tsmongo.
Simon Burhoe recording at Sacred Lake Tsmongo.
Yes, we’re riding Yaks at Sacred Lake Tsmongo. My yak was named Aloo.
Team with Rajesh Kumar Singh, Simon, Amy Jake, Susie ,and Kuldeep (taking photo) at Seven Sisters Water Falls, Sikkim Himalayas
Recording the rainstorm and monks chanting, at Rumtek Tibetan Monastery in Gangtok , Sikkim Himalayas
4. TWO PHILIPPINE RIVERS
Pasig River was once a vibrant trade and settlement route for thousands of years being the largest river that border up to MetroManila in the Philippines. In the age of the American colonization and industrial period of factories that heavily polluted the river proclaiming it a “dead” river in the 1990s. There has been a first rehabilitation effort which has been working and a second phase to be implemented. In Antique, the Bugang River, is known as the cleanest inlet river in the Philippines. Both rivers are integral to the livelihood
and history of Philippine culture. In exploring these cultural histories and physical sounds of the rivers, I was honored and happy to compose the new piano quintet Parallels and Confluence: Bugang and Pasig Rivers commissioned for Arneis String Quartet and pianist Alex Peh. It is composed in Philippine Kundiman style, love song, for piano quintet. Premiered in Boston in April 2024, and later performed for Charles Ives 100th Celebration at
the American Academy of Arts and Letters by Ensemble Echappeé in November 2024, the piece includes rivers in quad speakers, to create two rivers in the room flowing. Parallels and Confluence will release as an EP on Habitat Sounds in the spring of 2024.
Video filmed and recorded by Dave Jamrog and mixed by Jake Landau
5. HIGH ALTITUDE RAINFORESTS
What if the human footprint was not so large as it currently is all over the earth’s landscapes? Or more so, what are the efforts we can support and create to reduce this human footprint on the earth? There are a few places on the earth in which this is the current state. Some of these places are known as Sky Islands. In the Philippines northern islands Luzon, up in the Luzon Montane Rainforests , these high altitude rainforest islands exist. Because they are very remote , it is said that there is a possibility for evolution to happen a little faster. For example, there are 50 small species that exist only in these sky islands. The bamboo is also very large in these areas. This began my research into the islands and inspiration for a score for Extended Talking Gong Ensemble featuring Claire Chase, Alex Peh, Levy Lorenzo and Bergamot String Quartet joining. The world premiere was in July 2024 at Asia Society Museum NY NY producer by Rachel Cooper. Recorded live by Marc Urselli, Sky Islands will release in June 2024 with its California premiere of the live performance at Ojai Music Festival , with artistic director Claire Chase.
World Premiere of Sky Islands at Asia Society Museum, NY NY July 18, 2024
PRIMEVAL FORESTS AND TREE FRACTALS
I didn’t realize that for most of my life I have been walking through largely and most of the time what is called plantation forests. These are forests that have been cut down or re-cut down several times for various reasons to grow again. But what does it look ,
sound or feel like to walk through forests that have old growth, forests that are at least 150-250 years old. The energy of old growth forests which have been described as ancient, primeval forests is amazing to walk through. I felt so much life energy walking through migrating beech tree forests in Jasmund Park, Germany. I also felt that energy and life force walking and playing in Sikkim Himalayan forests too and the 300 old corked oaks of Doñana southern Spain. These are trees and forests that are not used for human purposes. These trees play a vital role in the environment and also store large amounts of carbon in their trunks, leaves and roots. Here seen and heard is a Rhythm in Nature residency playing forest rhythms from Luzon in a Baltic forest
In a visit as artist in residence to Grinnell College this fall in the prairies of Iowa at my friend and colleagues’s classes by Putu Tangkas Hiranmayena. With the students we recorded tree fractals and co-composed a piece of words and music and dance with the Balinese Ensemble inspired by ancient forests and personal extraordinary experiences of the students with trees.
This last fall in Berlin with Nurtingen Grunschule from Kreuzberg and TXL Wilkommen school , a Ukrainian Refugee school, we record Tree Fractals , Water, Birds, Grasslands and Insects , Heather Grass and Mushrooms. The class stops at the DAAD Gallery to listen and figure out some of the tree fractals and its rhythm cycles, as well as recording on field at the school campus and Tegel campus
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