Susie Ibarra

Side A Side B Merienda 1 (Snack) Claire Chase, piccolo, Dancesteps for PO & IO flute, bass flute for Alex Merienda 2 Kolubrí (Hummingbird) Alex Peh, piano Talking Gong Sunbird dedicated to for Claire Danongan Kalanduyan Susie Ibarra, drumset, gongs, percussion Merienda 3 Paniniwala (Belief) for Emanuel Merienda 4

This album is dedicated to my parents Herminia and Bartolome Ibarra who gave me the love of all of these magical things in life - meriendas, birdsongs, dancing and katutubo musika

Photography by Tony Cenicola. Recorded July 2020 at Studley Hall SUNY New Paltz. Recorded and mixed by Eli Crews at Studley Hall and Spillway Studios July and August 2020. Talking Gong was a commissioned piece during Susie Ibarra’s Kenneth Davenport Residency for New American Music at SUNY New Paltz 2018. Mastered by Ryan Streber at Oktaven Studios September 2020.

The recording of Talking Gong was supported by New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, New York City Department of Cultural Aﬀairs, Helen F. Whitaker Fund, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., New York State Council on the Arts, Howard Gilman Foundation.

Susie Ibarra is a Zildjian, Vic Firth and Yamaha Drumset Artist.

NEW FOCUS FCR271 DDD ℗ & © Susie Ibarra ASCAP RECORDINGS newfocusrecordings.com Susie Ibarra Susie Ibarra is a Filipinx composer, percussionist, and sound artist. She creates immersive experiences through sound to invite people to connect to their natural and built environments. Susie is a 2020 National Geographic Explorer Storyteller, a 2019 Doris Duke United States Artist Fellow in Music, Senior TED Fellow and 2019 Asian Cultural Council Research Fellow in working to preservation and support Indigenous music and culture, Musika Katatubo, in the Philippines, and sound recording on glaciers and water rhythms in the Himalayas. Recent commissions include Water Rhythms: Listening to Climate Change installations with glaciologist and geographer Michele Koppes for Fine Acts Foundation and TED Countdown on Climate Change Oct 2020, Rhythm Cycles solo drumset commissioned by Bagri Foundation and released on OTOROKU Digital UK Nov 2020; Digital Sanctuaries Harvard an urban soundwalk for iOS and iPAD commissioned and created with Claire Chase’s Freshman Seminar: Community Building and Social Justice Through Music Dec 2020; Pulsation for Kronos String Quartet’s 50 for the Future Feb 2020, and a participatory performance game piece Fragility Etudes for her band DreamTime Ensemble for Asia Society Triennial 2021.

Photograph by Tony Cenicola

Claire Chase Claire Chase, described by The New York Times as “the most important ﬂutist of our time,” is a soloist, collaborative artist, curator, educator and advocate for new and experimental music. Chase 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. She teaches at Harvard University and is a Creative Associate at The Juilliard School.

Alex Peh

Alex Peh is a contemporary pianist and teacher whose work explores the intersection of classical, contemporary and world piano traditions. He collaborated with Burmese master percussionist Kyaw Kyaw Naing to create the ﬁrst Burmese Hsaing Waing ensemble in America that features the piano in traditional Burmese Sandaya style. This project received major funding from New Music USA, Asian Cultural Council and Arts Mid-Hudson. As a 2019 Asian Cultural Council fellow, he travelled to Yangon Myanmar to study Burmese piano style with Dr. U Yee Nwe and taught at the Gitameit Music Institute. Alex has performed widely nationally and internationally, sharing special partnerships with artists Susie Ibarra, Claire Chase, Kyaw Kyaw Naing, and Phyllis Chen. Alex has attended the Banﬀ, Aspen and Tanglewood music festivals where he worked with Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Paul Lewis Emanuel Ax, and Peter Serkin. He has studied with major artists such as Arnaldo Cohen, Menahem Pressler, Sylvia Wang, Evelyne Brancart, and Kyaw Kyaw Naing. He is an associate professor of piano at SUNY New Paltz.

Photograph by Tony Cenicola About Talking Gong

Merienda (Snack) Originally composed in 2004 as part of a suite of music titled A Day in the Life of a Migrant Worker. This piece consists of phrases that are to be conducted and utilized with improvisation within the ensemble. The suite was a commission for the Freer Gallery at the American Museum with the ﬁrst exhibit by a Filipino- American photographer Ricardo Alvarado. It exhibited his black and white photos of Filipino migrant workers in California. I have always enjoyed performing this piece with numerous musicians and love how there exists so many varying possibilities of music that can be created with this piece. In this album, we have recorded 4 short meriendas for the trio.

Merienda 1 is dedicated to Pauline Oliveros and Ione who have been both dear friends, mentors and inspirations to me.

Talking Gong I was honored to be commissioned by Alex Peh and SUNY New Paltz in 2018 as Davenport Composer in Residence at SUNY NP. This piece is inspired by southern Philippine gongs, gandingan, and kulintang music from Mindanao. These gongs have been used to communicate , to talk with. Drawing upon cipher notation, cycle repetitions of gong phrases I composed a piece for trio to feature Alex Peh piano, Claire Chase ﬂute, and I accompany on drumset, kulintang, gandingan and agong gongs. As this is the title piece it also was the beginning of our new trio, Talking Gong.

Talking Gong is dedicated to master kulintang artist, friend and mentor Danongan Kalanduyan

Paniniwala (Belief) Originally composed as a solo for piano, this piece became a duet for the album for piano and drumset. Like the word belief, the music is composed in melodic phrases trusting in its truth, its belief, and ability to depart from yet keep close these musical intentions.

Paniniwala is dedicated to my son Emanuel.

Dancesteps Composed for solo piano, this piece is inspired by dance styles in the Philippines including Indigenous styles by Maguindanaon, T’boli of the south in Mindanao and folkloric styles with the Habanera, Danzon inﬂuencing Balitaw and Kundiman in the middle Visayas and north island Luzon.

Dancesteps is dedicated to pianist Alex Peh.

Kolumbrí (Hummingbird) Is a solo drum piece inspired by the Philippine hummingbird. One of the smallest songbirds they create both humming sounds from their wing movement and are one of three bird orders to have evolved their song and vocal learning. This piece meditates on these sounds yet placed at lower frequencies with drums and cymbals.

Sunbird The purple Philippine sunbird which often has a olive back and underneath is bright yellow, sometimes with metallic green or blue. They sing beautiful songs. They are often found in tropical rainforests and also in open woodlands.

Sunbird is dedicated to Claire Chase NEW FOCUS RECORDINGS