Susie Ibarra - Walking on Water (2021)

Walking on Water images began as artist Makoto Fujimura’s elegy to the victims of March 11th, 2011 Tohoku Great Earthquake and the Tsunami. The series continues now as a collaboration with visionary composer and avant-garde percussionist Susie Ibarra. Ibarra took an underwater microphone to Himalayan hills, to record the sound of glaciers breaking and melting, and uses that as the immersive backdrop to her composition. Walking on Water, therefore now, has become an elegy to the climate change crisis, as well as an homage to human resilience of hope in dire circumstances. Fujimura and Ibarra hope to install the paintings and the composed music in a series of museums and sacred spaces.

11 Spirituals were composed by Susie Ibarra to accompany Walking on Water paintings by Makoto Fujimura. This album includes two compositions created out of field recordings of water in Sikkim and India in the Himalayas. These field recordings are part of an ongoing project, Water Rhythms: Listening to Climate Change, a collaboration between Susie Ibarra and Michele Koppes (climate scientist, glaciologist and geographer). Ibarra’s DreamTime Ensemble performs and records these spirituals This ensemble features Jennifer Choi, violin; Yves Dharamraj, cello; Claudia Acuña, voice; Jake Landau, guitars, synthesizer & hammond organ; Yuka C. Honda, electronics, and Ibarra herself on drumset & percussion.