I spent part of last evening sitting at the feet of Susie Ibarra. Oh, there were some other people there, too, including William Parker, Cooper Moore, Rob Brown, and maybe a couple hundred locals.
A great treat. They may have only played three compositions, and I was flabbergasted to find out at the end that it was 11:30. I'm not sure how much after 9 they started, it certainly didn't seem like that much time had gone by, though it was clear that they stretched enormously.
Nobody except Parker was particularly spectacular, though Ibarra has some wrists. Brown was less striking, sounding a little like a non-melodic Ornette. He's much better on "Compassion Seizes Bed-Stuy" certainly. Moore was really on at times, but everybody but Parker occasionally seemed lost. Ibarra picked up on what the others were playing much of the time, but she kept quite busy finding a variety of her own sounds to make, to the point that it got a bit monotonous watching her change what she was doing continuously! All she had was a snare, tom, bass, crash, and hi-hat, plus a lot of little instruments, but she covered a lot of ground with them. Probably her most noticeable trait, after her tendency to play fast, is that she never gives in to the other players, she's a very dominant personality (that was really vivid when she played with David S. Ware). Parker was playing a gorgeous solo when she started clapping then tapping away with her palms, and she soon took over and played a long solo without sticks. I tended to want to hear more of Parker throughout the evening, but he did offer plenty.
They opened with "Malcolm's Smile", then played a tune that sounded like a major scale in 9/4, though the piece as a whole wasn't restricted to any key or meter. They finished with something based on a 4-bar pattern. Oh, somewhere in there I guess they did a piece where Brown played flute, quite nicely in places.