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Susie Ibarra’s Cosmos of Sound New York
Asia Society
07/18/2024 - & July 20, 2024
Susie Ibarra: Sky Islands (World Premiere)
Susie Ibarra, with Extended Filipino Talking Gong Ensemble: Claire Chase (Flute), Alex Peh (Piano), Levy Lorenzo, Susie Ibarra (Percussion), Bergamot Quartet: Ledah Finck, Sarah Thomas (Violins), Amy Huimei Tan (Viola), Irène Han (Cello)
Nick Houfek (Lighting Designer)
The Ensemble (© Samuel A. Dog)
“Nature is an infinite sphere, where the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.”
Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
Whew! The stage of Susie Ibarra’s Sky Islands last night made the Sō Percussion look like a clutch of little drummer boys. Here were Mindanao and Brunei gongs of every size and shape, xylophones of wood and bells, bamboo sticks, a dance‑band drum set, tin cans of every size, a thimble‑size bell, a group of Igorot bells, a bass flute, inside and outside the piano, and a string quartet playing harmonics and glissandi amid the percussion sound sculptures.
And what did it all mean? With guilt, I soon forgot that this was supposed to be an effigy of the Filipino rainforest, itself an avatar of the world’s forests, themselves a simulacrum of our so‑frail ecosystem. Ms. Ibarra–the Luzon‑born percussionist/composer/sound artist/international imaginary innovator–offered this ensemble as a “floating garden” to encompass the natural phenomena of Luzon.
The reality eschewed those verdant images. Instead, she created a world of colors (even the lighting designs were creative), counterpoint, variegated structures and a complex interlocking of sounds.
First, we must ask what Sky Islands was not. It was not a stylized gamelan or Thai ranad or an Asian cacophony. It was certainly not a mere celebration of exotica. And one could not label this group a meeting of East and West, Lou Harrison/John Cage style.
The genius of Ms. Ibarra’s composition was part pictures at an exhibition and part a single tapestry of sounds, reverberating, murmuring, exclaiming. And such was her inspiration that various sections and consorts, no matter how different, seemed to possess a single (and singular) musical message.
S. Ibarra, C. Chase (© Samuel A. Dog)
A few examples. The start was the traditional Luzon stick dance. Ms. Ibarra and Levy Lorenzo stood in front of the stage, each with a pair of seven‑foot high bamboo sticks. First an amorphous tapping, this morphing into a rhythm, and–like a fugue–bringing in the rest of the string/wind ensemble. The end was rather cute (the only cute section), where each artist stood, walked or danced in a conga line, across the stage, down the aisles and back again.
In between were wondrous movements. The soliloquy was most telling. Flutist Claire Chase sitting on the floor with her bass flute. This augmented with Ms. Ibarra’s tiny bell, this added to Alex Peh playing the inside of the piano, this joined by the string quartet.
Or a dazzling display of Ms. Ibarra on the dance‑band drum, with Asian‑style bells and the full ensemble. Or best yet, two minutes of interlaced themes sounding–without any melodic reference–to the opening of Mahler’s First Symphony.
Much of this might have been improvised, but I think not. The creations were too careful, too well organized.
Bergamot Quartet, L. Lorenzo (© Samuel A. Dog)
In a way Sky Islands defied the odds. One might have predicted 50‑odd uninterrupted minutes of athematic tin cans, bells, gongs and strings to be a tour de force, with polite audience attention. Sky Islands was the opposite. Not only different aural sounds, both tonal and atonal, but at times a Bach-style counterpoint or Balinese bells.
Bach, though, had his melodies either as theme or cantus firmus. Just as gamelan music is essentially variations on a theme or trope. Ms. Ibarra needed no whistleable crutch. Perhaps the closest aural image would be in Debussy’s La Mer, the sun dancing on the waves.
Sky Islands, though, was different. If I didn’t think of nature or ecosystems or rainforests, that was forgivable. For here, Susie Ibarra created an abstraction. Orchestral timbres, chamber tintinnabulations, and cosmic sounds which endlessly both whirled and whispered.
Harry Rolnick
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