Habitat Sounds is announcing the roll out of a trilogy of releases of compositions and recordings by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Susie Ibarra, with a book of scores to follow.
These pieces were completed, premiered, and recorded during a special time of her 2024 DAAD fellowship in music and sound in Berlin, Germany.
- Parallels and Confluence: Bugang and Pasig Rivers - piano quintet with dual rivers in stereo composed by Ibarra for Arneis String Quartet and featuring Daniel Louis Doña and Alex Peh
- Sky Islands - Ibarra’s Pulitzer Prize winning composition written for Extended Talking Gong Ensemble featuring herself, Claire Chase, Alex Peh, Levy Lorenzo, and Bergamot String Quartet; Ledah Finck, Sarah Thomas, Amy Huimei Tan, and Irène Han
- CHAN: Sonnets and Devotions in the Wilderness - Ibarra’s most recent composition recently premiered in Berlin as a culmination of her 2024 DAAD Fellowship in music and sound - featuring poets Don Lee Choi and Logan February, and Ensemble; Otay:onii (Lane Shi), Martin Nagy, Daniel Louis Doña, Caleb Salgado, Michiko Ogawa, Jake Landau, Gunnhildur Einarsdóttir, Elena Kakaliagou, Hilary Jeffery, Sebastian Heindl, and herself. This composition and performance was commissioned by MaerzMusik2025 Berliner Festspiele , produced with DAAD Artist in Berlin Program and recorded by Deutschlandfunk Culture
The first album to release of the trilogy will be Parallels and Confluence: Bugang and Pasig Rivers. Digital and limited vinyl Pre-Order now available, and will ship and release digitally on September 12, 2025.
Sky Islands will follow on November 21, 2025, and CHAN: Sonnets and Devotions in the Wilderness on January 16, 2026. A book of scores to accompany these album releases will come out on December 5, 2025.
Bugang River in the Philippines is situated in the north of Panay Island in the town of Pandan Antique, and is known to be the cleanest river inlet in the Philippines. People often swim, tube, relax, and enjoy its crystal clear waters. Pasig River in the Philippines, flows along the capital city and is historical in the development of the city Manila, on Luzon Island, and is one of the most polluted rivers in the Philippines. Although there have been attempts to clean this river over the years, it’s garbage filled and polluted waters still line the communities on the banks of the river, making it dangerous and near impossible to use the water as a resource for cleaning, washing, swimming. Both rivers are integral and important to the communities that live along the banks.
Parallels and Confluence: Bugang and Pasig Rivers is a love story between these 2 rivers and written in the style of a Kundiman, a Filipino love song structure.
Composed for piano quintet featuring Arneis Quartet and pianist Alex Peh, the performance and score also includes dual rivers to be placed in quad in the performance space, and mixed in stereo for the album release, each distinctly flowing in its own speaker at points in the score, mirroring the difference in the 2 rivers.
The river sounds you hear were field recorded by Ibarra and multi-instrumentalist, sound engineer, and field recordist Jake Landau on multiple trips to the Ganges River in India and Sikkim. The Ganges at different points, mirrors the Bugang and Pasig rivers in its purity and pollution, where at the source the glacial runoff is clear and clean, near the sink it is heavily polluted.
The live river mix was played by Landau.
Parallels and Confluence was commissioned by the Arneis Quartet as part of their Kaisahan Initiative and premiered on 7 April, 2024 at First Church Boston. This album is a live recording of the premiere concert.
This album also includes Laktawan at Tumolon, a duet piece commissioned by Daniel Louis Doña and composed by Susie Ibarra for viola and kulintang. Meaning literally Skip and Jump, this composition plays with the feeling and lightness of skipping and jumping across stones as a child in streams for Ibarra. It also alludes to the folkloric Filipino story that kulintang gongs originated in 14th century from a princess in Mindanao, Philippines pulling stones out of the water and playing them in pitches. These stones were then emulated in metal gongs.
These purchases are PRE-ORDERS for the album Parallels and Confluence: Bugang and Pasig Rivers, and will be delivered to you digitally if you purchase the digital copy on the release date of Parallels and Confluence: Bugang and Pasig River, September 12, 2025, and will be shipped out on the release date if you purchase the vinyl.
Album Credits -
Composed by - Susie Ibarra
Arneis Quartet -
Heather Braun - violin
Rose Drucker - violin
Daniel Louis Doña - viola
Agnes Kim - cello
Alex Peh - piano
Jake Landau - Live mix of 2 Rivers in Quad
Susie Ibarra - Kulintang
Recorded by - Dave Jamrog
Mixed and Mastered by - Jake Landau
Album artwork by Hisham A. Bharoocha
© Susie Ibarra ASCAP