Susie Ibarra
About this Artist
Susie Ibarra is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Filipina-American composer, percussionist, and sound artist. Her work bridges music, ecology, and cultural heritage.
She actively supports Indigenous and traditional music practices and advocates for environmental stewardship focused on glaciers, freshwater systems, and climate awareness.
A Yamaha, Zildjian, and Vic Firth Drum Artist, she is the founder of Susie Ibarra Studio and co-founder of the label and publisher Habitat Sounds.
Ibarra's recent compositions focus attention on the life of biodiverse habitats and her cultural heritage. These pieces include Talking Gong Trio's title album on New Focus Recordings; Her Pulitzer Prize winning piece Sky Islands with its upcoming album 2026 release on Habitat Sounds, a double quartet. This piece is inspired by the high altitude mountain rainforests of Luzon in the Philippines; Parallels and Confluence, Bugang and Pasig Rivers commissioned for piano quintet with Arneis String Quartet which released 2025 on Habitat Sounds; CHAN: Sonnets and Devotions in the Wilderness commissioned for MaerzMusik Berliner Festspiele 2025 and produced with DAAD Artist in Berlin program, is six kundiman love songs for landscapes dear to her with lyrics by Poets Don Mee Choi and Logan February and composed by Ibarra for ensemble, pipe organ and 10 channel speaker tree, recorded Deutschelandfunk Kultur.
Her book, Rhythm in Nature: An Ecology of Rhythm (2024), reflects her deep engagement with sound and environment.
Recent honors include the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Music, a 2025 Creative Capital Artist Award, a 2024-2025 DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program fellowship, and the 2024 Charles Ives Fellowship in Composition from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has also been recognized as a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellow, Asian Cultural Council Fellow, United States Artists Fellow, TED Senior Fellow, and National Geographic Explorer Storyteller.