Susie Ibarra: “Sky Islands” Open Rehearsal
December 13, 4-6pm (run-through at 5pm)
Shepard Recital Hall in College Hall
SUNY New Paltz
Suggested donation at the door
Come and enjoy this rare opportunity to see a dynamic piece of music in the making!
With a nontraditional score, parts of this new piece will be improvised and assembled in real time by a stellar group of musicians. The work engages bamboo percussion instruments, gong sculptures, jazz and Filipino elements, and more.
SUNY New Paltz’s Prof. Alex Peh says: “The joy of it is how we come together and collaborate to make this happen - that’s the most fun part!”
Percussionist and sound artist Susie Ibarra creates a new work for two percussionists, flute, piano and string quartet, entitled ‘Sky Islands’, in collaboration with Unison Arts.
Please join the artist, pianist Alex Peh, flutist Claire Chase, percussionist Levy Lorenzo and the Bergamot String Quartet for an open rehearsal and preliminary first hearing of this work on December 13th, 4-6 pm, in Shepard Recital Hall in College Hall, SUNY New Paltz.
The seed money to create ‘Sky Islands’ was provided by a NYSCA project grant with Unison Arts. Since then, the piece has received generous support from the Harvard FROMM Foundation and Asia Society.
‘Sky Islands’ will make its New York City premiere at Asia Society, July 15-20, 2024, as well as future performances at Mass MOCA in August, 2024.
Artist Bios
Susie Ibarra is a Filipinx composer, percussionist, and sound artist. Her interdisciplinary practice spans formats, including performance, mobile sound-mapping applications, multi-channel audio installations, recording, and documentary. Many of Ibarra’s projects are based in cultural and environmental preservation: she has worked to support Indigenous and traditional music cultures, such musika katatubo from the North and South Philippine islands; her sound research advocates for the stewardship of glaciers and freshwaters; and she collaborates with The Joudour Sahara Music Program in Morocco on initiatives that preserve sound-based heritage with sustainable music practices and support the participation of women and girls in traditional music communities.
She is a recipient of the Foundation For Contemporary Arts Award in Music/ Sound (2022), a National Geographic Storytelling Fellowship (2020); United States Artists Fellowship in Music (2019); the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship (2018); and a TED Senior Fellowship (2014).
Susie Ibarra is a Yamaha, Vic Firth, and Zildjian Drum Artist.
Her album, Talking Gong ( New Focus Recordings 2021), features soloists and ensemble members Claire Chase ( bass, alto , flute and piccolo) and Alex Peh ( piano) , with its title piece commissioned by SUNY New Paltz when Ibarra was Davenport Composer in Residence 2018. The album is inspired by traditional Filipino southern gong music, Maguindanaon kulintang music and by birdsongs of the region.
Water Rhythms: Listening to Climate Change (2020) is a collaboration with glaciologist, geographer, and climate scientist Dr. Michele Koppes, which maps water rhythms from source to sink. Ibarra’s composition is derived from field recordings of five global watersheds, including the Greenland ice sheet and glacier-fed rivers of the Himalayas. Water Rhythms is an acoustic story of human entanglements with a changing climate and landscape. The premiere of Water Rhythms was presented by Fine Acts Foundation and TED at Jack Poole Plaza, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and Innisfree Gardens, Millbrook, NY (2020). It has also been shown at The Countdown Summit, Edinburgh, Scotland (2021); as part of Nothing Makes Itself at the ARKO Art Center, Seoul, Korea (2021); and as a multi-channel sound installation at Fridman Gallery, Beacon, NY (2021) and the San Francisco Exploratorium (2022).
Ibarra’s piece Fragility Etudes , was a commissioned film by Asia Society Triennial 2021 We Do Not Dream Alone. These compositions are rhythmic studies for solos and ensemble which reflects humanity’s interdependence. Ibarra explores conduction, polyrhythms and concepts from the physics of glass. Fragility Etudes was filmed in residency and premiered at MASSMoCA in live performance 2021. The film is directed by collaborating multimedia artist Yuka C. Honda. September 2022 Ibarra conducted multi-ensemble Fragility Etudes in Zamane Festival Morocco. She was commissioned for a new work for percussion in which she created RITWAL solo percussion Susie Ibarra, for the UNDRUM Festival produced by Architek Percussion and Suoni Per Il Popolo 2021 for video which premiered in June 2021.
As a producer, Ibarra collaborates with Splice to create sound packs based in environmental sounds, traditional musical cultures, and her own extended percussion language. Sounds of the Drâa Valley Morocco is a sound pack featuring six traditional ensembles and soloists from South Saharan Morocco (2022). Ibarra has also collaborated with composer and bassist Richard Reed Parry on two sound packs and a new album of compositions focused on breath cycles and heart beats, Heart and Breath: Rhythm and Tone Fields (OFFAIR Records, 2022).
Claire Chase, described by The New York Times recently as “the North Star of her instrument’s ever-expanding universe,” is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, and educator. Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, Chase has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists, and in 2013 launched the 24-year commissioning project Density 2036. Now in its tenth year, Density 2036 reimagines the solo flute literature over a quarter-century through commissions, performances, recordings, education and an accessible archive at density2036.org. Chase co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble in 2001, was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2012, and in 2017 was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Chase is currently Professor of the Practice of Music at Harvard University’s Department of Music, a Creative Associate at The Juilliard School, and a Collaborative Partner with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony. She is the Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall for the 2022-23 season.
Alex Peh is a pianist, improviser and scholar who explores the piano in global classical, contemporary, and improvised practices. A 2021 Fulbright Global Scholar, Peh explores contemporary piano repertoire, finding new approaches to tuning, pedagogy, notation and musical transmission. He has commissioned composers Anna Clyne, Susie Ibarra, Hafez Modirzadeh, Phyllis Chen, Ne Myo Aung, Nikos Ordoulidis, and Kyaw Kyaw Naing funded by National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, New York State. Council of the Arts, Harvard FROMM, Arts Mid-Hudson, Asian Cultural Council and Fulbright.
Peh is a member of Talking Gong, an improvising trio with percussionist, Susie Ibarra and flutist, Claire Chase. They released their debut album in 2019 entitled Talking Gong on New Focus Recordings available on all major streaming platforms. As a trio, they made their debut performance as part of the Davenport Residency for New American Music at SUNY New Paltz, and shortly after made their New York City debut at BRIC at the Look and Listen Festival 2018. They have since performed throughout NYC at Public Theater, Roulette Intermedium, The Stone, and Carnegie Zankel Hall in a celebration of Pauline Oliveros at 90.
As a 2019 Asian Cultural Council fellow, Peh travelled to Yangon, Myanmar to study Burmese piano, a classical style that the Burmese call Sandaya, from legendary pianist Dr. U Yee Nwe. Peh began his studies in Sandaya from Kyaw Kyaw Naing and collaborated with him to create the first Burmese Saing Waing ensemble in America, comprising students, faculty and community members at SUNY New Paltz. In 2019, they made their debut performance at Roulette Intermedium, New York City, performing a new composition that Kyaw Kyaw Naing composed for the group entitled Growing Rhythm. He collaborated with visual anthropologist Lauren Meeker to document this work as an ethnographic film, Growing Rhythm, that explores the process of attunement in learning Burmese Saing Waing music.
Peh earned his doctorate in piano performance from Indiana University where he mentored with Arnaldo Cohen, Menahem Pressler and Evelyne Brancart. He pursued undergraduate studies at Northwestern University where he worked with Sylvia Wang. He attended the Banff, Aspen and Tanglewood music festivals where he studied with Emanuel Ax, Pamela Frank, Claude Frank, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, and Peter Serkin. He is an associate professor of piano at SUNY New Paltz.
Bergamot Quartet is fueled by a passion for exploring and advocating for the music of living composers, continually expanding the limits of the string quartet’s rich tradition in western classical music. With a priority given to music by women, they aim to place this new, genre-bending music in meaningful dialogue with the histories that precede it with creative programming, community-oriented audience building, and frequent commissioning.
Bergamot values partnership and collaboration as a vital element of their creative work. Included in their 2023 season is a partnership with NYU's dance department, an appearance on the Ecstatic Music Series at Merkin Hall with Circuit des Yeux, an ongoing set of "Cross Quartets/Quintets" with composer Dan Trueman, and a new work to be composed for Bergamot and Latin jazz sextet by percussionist Samuel Torres. Highlights of their 2022 season were the release of their debut album, In The Brink, on New Focus Recordings featuring a work by member Ledah Finck with percussionist Terry Sweeney as guest artist, a co-commission of Darian Thomas with Sō Percussion as part of Sō’s Flexible Commissions project, appearances at the NY City Center with NYC Ballet principal dancer Tiler Peck, performances at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, and the participation at the Klangspuren Chamber Lab in Innsbruck.
In addition, Bergamot is particularly excited about helping young people discover their potential as music creators. Recent engagements include residencies at The Peabody Institute, Princeton University, Towson University, Peabody Institute’s Junior Bach program, and MATA Jr.
Bergamot Quartet is Ledah Finck and Sarah Thomas, violins; Amy Tan, viola; and Irène Han, cello. Founded at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore in 2016, Bergamot Quartet is based in New York City and was the Graduate String Quartet in Residence at the Mannes School of Music for 2020-2022.
Levy Lorenzo "electronics wizard" - The New York Times
Born in Bucharest, Filipino-American Levy Marcel Ingles Lorenzo, Jr. works at the intersection of music, art, and technology. On an international scale, his body of work spans electronics design, sound engineering, instrument building, installation art, improvisation, and percussion performance. With a primary focus on inventing new instruments, he prototypes, composes, and performs new electronic music. As an art consultant, Levy designs interactive electronics ranging from small sculptures to large-scale public art installations with artists such as Alvin Lucier, Christine Sun Kim, Ligorano-Reese, Autumn Knight, and Leo Villareal. As a musician, he has worked with artists such as Peter Evans, Tyshawn Sorey, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Ryuichi Sakamoto, George Lewis, Henry Threadgill, and Claire Chase. As a sound engineer, he is in demand as a specialist in the realization of complete electro-acoustic concerts with non-traditional configurations. A core member of the acclaimed International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), he fulfills multiple roles as percussionist, electronics performer, and sound engineer. His work has been featured at STEIM, REWIRE, MIT Media Lab, Harvestworks, Banff Centre, Harvard University, G4TV, Grey Group, Bose, Amazon Studios, BBC, The New York Times, the Hermitage and Burning Man. He recently made his soloist debut with the NY Philharmonic for the reopening concerts of David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.
Levy earned degrees as Master of Electrical & Computer Engineering from Cornell University, and Doctor of Musical Arts in Percussion Performance from Stony Brook University. He has presented numerous workshops and lectures on electronic musical instrument design and performance practice. Dr. Lorenzo holds a position as Professor of Creative Technologies at The New School, College of Performing Arts where he is director of the Nstrument Lab.