Asia Society New York presents the world premiere of Sky Islands by Susie Ibarra (July 18 & 20)

Featured as part of ongoing exhibition COAL + ICE: Inspiring Climate Action
Through Art and Ideas (through Aug 11)

(June 2024) — Asia Society is pleased to present the world premiere of Filipinx composer and
percussionist Susie Ibarra’s Sky Islands, a musical tribute to the world’s rich and fragile
ecosystems inspired by the distinct rainforest habitats of Luzon, Philippines. Sky Islands features
the interlocking rhythms and melodies of Philippine Northern style bamboo, gong, and flute
music, performed on a sonic sculpture titled Floating Gardens that connects underwater pond
sounds with gong elements and live signals from the Philippines. Sky Islands is composed for
Ibarra’s eight-piece music ensemble, including the Extended Talking Gong Ensemble with
Claire Chase on flute, Alex Peh on piano, and Levy Lorenzo and Ibarra on percussion. They are
joined by the four-member Bergamot Quartet, comprising violinists Ledah Finck and Sarah
Thomas, violist Amy Huimei Tan and cellist Irène Han.

Presented as part of Asia Society’s exhibition and program series COAL + ICE (details below), Sky
Islands is a musical call to action. The title refers to distinct ecosystems at high altitude ranges,
known for becoming hotspots for biodiversity and unusual forms of life. Geographically isolated
with few or no outside predators, sky islands are places where it is possible to see evolution “sped
up.” Ibarra was intrigued by this phenomenon as it occurs on the mountaintops of rainforests in
her home region of Luzon, Philippines, home to the world’s largest number of unique mammal
species. Her latest musical work uses sound and sculpture to capture the essence of these
unspoiled ecosystems.

Susie Ibarra is a Filipinx composer, percussionist, and sound artist. Her interdisciplinary practice
includes composition, performance, mobile sound-mapping applications, multichannel audio
installations, recording, and documentary. Among her many projects, she is the founder of Susie
Ibarra Studio and, with artist-musician and engineer Jake Landau, the label and publisher Habitat
Sounds. She works to support Indigenous and traditional music cultures, like musika katutubo
from the Philippines, advocates for the stewardship of glaciers and freshwaters, and supports
initiatives in addressing water and desert climate issues, and women’s and girls’ education with
Joudour Sahara in Morocco. Recent honors include a 2024 DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program
fellowship, for which she is based in the German capital, and a 2024 Charles Ives Fellowship with
the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is the author of a new book, Rhythm in Nature: An
Ecology of Rhythm, in which she shares her studies and explorations and her practice guide to
discovering rhythm daily in the world of birdsongs, glacial freshwater, oceans, deserts, canyons
and resonance, forest and insects. Ibarra’s collaborators for Sky Islands include renowned flutist
Claire Chase, the first flutist to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (2012) and Lincoln Center’s
Avery Fisher Prize (2017); pianist Alex Peh, a 2021 Fulbright Global Scholar and 2019 Asian
Cultural Council Fellow; Filipino-American percussionist and “electronics wizard” (New York
Times) Levy Lorenzo, a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble and a core
collaborator in Claire Chase’s Density 2036 project; and the New York City-based Bergamot
Quartet, founded at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore in 2016 and specializing in music by
female composers.

Sky Islands is commissioned by Asia Society, with support from Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard
University, NYSCA, and NYFA Anonymous Was A Woman Environmental Artists Grants.

About COAL + ICE

Asia Society presents this immersive photography and video exhibition, which brings to life the
environmental and human costs of climate change, while also highlighting the innovative solutions that

provide hope for a more sustainable future. At once intimate and universal, the powerful images capture
the human face of climate change across the globe.

Comprising the work of more than 30 photographers from China and around the world, the exhibition
traces a photographic arc from deep within coal mines to the melting glaciers of the greater Himalaya
and across the globe, where rising sea levels and extreme weather events are wreaking havoc. The
imagery in COAL + ICE is drawn from diverse materials, from glass-plate negatives to smartphone
videos, spanning more than a century. Through intimate portraits and vast altered landscapes, these
photographs document the consequences triggered by our continued reliance on fossil fuels.

The third floor of the exhibition takes things a step further to reflect the innovative ideas for climate
solutions that have germinated most recently, with Maya Lin, Jake Barton (of Local Projects), and
Superflux contributing to the actions we can take collectively. Superflux, the London-based
international award-winning design firm co-founded by Anab Jain and Jon Arden, has created New
York 2050, a fully-immersive, multi-sensory installation, in the final section of COAL + ICE. As
visitors enter the space, they experience what New York actually looked like in 2023, when Canadian
fires coated its skies with a thick orange smog. The second space is a 360-degree, slow-moving, visual
rendering of what the city could look like in 2050, with utopian views of self-sustaining rooftop,
balcony, and indoor farms, pedestrian walkways and riverboats in place of cars, and wind and solar
energy in place of coal and gas.

The mission of COAL + ICE is to bring awareness to and inspire action on the climate crisis. By
providing an immersive experience of a recent environmental catastrophe and then showing a vision of
an equally realistic future, New York 2050 sparks the imagination viscerally and urges visitors to
personally take part in building a healthier and more sustainable environment.

COAL + ICE premiered in Beijing in 2011. Over the past 12 years, it has traveled to Shanghai and
Yixian in China, and internationally to Paris, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., using art to
highlight the need for collaboration between the largest global carbon emitters – the U.S. and China – in
addressing the climate challenge. In 2018, COAL + ICE made its U.S. premiere on the West Coast as a
fully immersive experience and expanded its imagery to visualize the global consequences of the
climate crisis.

COAL + ICE was conceived by Orville Schell, the Arthur Ross Director of Asia Society’s Center on
U.S.-China Relations and renowned photographer Susan Meiselas.

About Asia Society

Founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller III, Asia Society is an educational institution based in New
York with 16 locations in the United States, Europe, and Asia including state-of-the-art cultural
centers and gallery spaces in Hong Kong and Houston. Through exhibitions and public programs,
Asia Society in New York provides a forum for the issues and viewpoints reflected in both
traditional and contemporary Asian art, and in Asia today.

Susie Ibarra’s Sky Islands at COAL + ICE

July 18 & 20 at 7:15 pm
New York, NY
Asia Society
Susie IBARRA: Sky Islands (world premiere)
Extended Filipino Talking Gong Ensemble with Claire Chase, flute; Alex Peh, piano; Levy Lorenzo
and Susie Ibarra, percussion
Bergamot Quartet

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© 21C Media Group, June 2024