A Night with a Russian

Arriving a few minutes late, Anna Leah and I found the entrance to the Philamlife auditorium firmly shut, and the security guard refused to give an inch even as the performer, Sofya Gulyak, was already moving swiftly to her second piece, Chopin's Polonaise Fantasie in A-flat, op. 61 with hardly a pause after the Mazurkas.

We learned later that she did wait for a few seconds for the expected applause after the first piece (it would have been the cue for latecomers like us to sneak in). It didn't come, leaving her with this puzzled look but she went on with the next piece.

Although physically heavyset with a distracting tendency to take brief pauses to wave aside an errant strand of curly hair from her face, pull down her black blouse or tug at her sleeve, Gulyak showed capacities for powerful hand work in the passages that called for thundering fortes and fortissimos and delicacy, especially in her interpretation of Schumann's Abegg Variations, Kinderscenen and Carnaval.

We've often wondered why Manila remains in the radar of world-class classical musicians, considering there's a lot of marketing and promotion still to be done to fill up concert halls. In conversations with writer Pablo Tariman, I shared my observations how I see the same people at concerts, and they're mainly seniors, some with domestic helpers assisting them; they come in wheelchairs or hobble with the aid of canes or walkers.

Wonder no more. Filipinos know how to ovate to recognize an excellent performance. Last night, there were shouts of "Bellisima!", not just non-stop clapping, standing ovations and cries of "More." My teacher, Nieves Epistola, used to compare Filipino and Japanese audiences. She noticed that Japanese music students were notorious for bringing in music sheets of the pieces to be played at the concert and study the pages, trying to see if the performer missed some notes. She said they wanted to get their money's worth. Pinoys are kind in comparison.

Producer Ray Sison of ROS Music Center is an example of kindness. After the applause fades and people rise to leave, he always enjoins the audience to go up the stage to meet the artist. Normally, admirers who want their programs signed or pictures taken with the performer go backstage.

Up close Sofya's pudgy, awkward appearance dissipates to show a milk-complexioned, youthful woman who looks like she is just on her junior year at the conservatory. She is on the early side of 30 but already her accomplishments include being the first woman to win the Leeds International Piano Competition on its 16th year in '09.

I feel so blessed the past few months to have watched and listened to the likes of Sofya, Albert Tiu, Qin Li Wei, Arthur Espiritu, who wears the crown of "Prince of Cantabile" placed on his head by Pablo. On Monday, Oct. 18, another seasoned pianist, Pascal Roge will be here for a night of Chopin and French Impressionism. Lined up in the program are 18 pieces by Faure, Chopin, Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc.

This time, I have no more reason to be tardy as I have a gut feeling that we might have a full house.

Photo by Anna Leah Sarabia of blogger shaking pianist Sofya Gulyak's hand

I Can (Still) Dance!

My daughters are unanimous in their opinion: their nanay is better off dancing than singing. They reiterated this the morning after my bro-in-law's big birthday bash at the exclusive, members-only Tower Club on the 33rd floor of Philamlife in Makati.

Willie Fernandez turned 62 last Saturday, not a special age, but it was the first time he was throwing a party this major. When Kimi, my eldest girl who works at his PR firm, said that the Spirit of '67 would provide live music, I got into my most comfortable dancing slippers and even remembered to bring along an extra shirt in case the one I was wearing got all wet from sweat on the dance floor.

When Upsilonians get together with their partners, trust that there is more talking than acting done. So as the brods sat, drank, ate and chatted and the Spirit of '67 played its first set, I stood, swayed, but the Upsilonian in my life was as immovable as the post holding up the function room.

When one of my sister-in-law's nieces gamely went up with me as the catchy "Lança Perfume" (a Brazilian hit, by the way, popularized by Rita Lee) was sung, the dancing got started. It seemed the band's takes on the Beatles, Dave Clark Five, Beach Boys, the Village People's "YMCA" were all it took to make the crowd get up and boogie. During the band's first set, the disappointing thought running in my mind was, "Why are these party-goers behaving like they're in a concert?"

Anyway, I got my adrenaline fix. When the crowd thinned to a handful of relatives and latecomers Letty Jimenez Magsanoc, Nancy Carvajal, Willie Revillame and entourage, it was sing-along time. After my ruination of "Moon River" and "Alfie," my kids sternly advised, "Stick to dancing, Nanay." Our family's Upsilonian shook his head and said, "It looked like it was more your party, not Willie's."

Thanks again for the reason to party, Willie. Till you turn 63! Same time, same band, I hope.

Photographer Kimi Fernandez captures her nanay in the throes of Saturday night fever.

Romancing the Cello

Hinayang is a Filipino word that can't quite be translated into the English "rue" or "regret". It was a sentiment my fellow concert-going companion Anna Leah Sarabia, a women's rights advocate and a music lover to the core from back in her choir singing and classical guitar playing years, nursed after we left Philamlife Auditorium yesterday (Oct. 10) following the warm reception for visiting China-born cellist Qin Li Wei and Cebu-born pianist Albert Tiu in their "Duo Concertante."

Anna rued that so many people missed the chance to be transported to a near-nirvana state by their music. Were it not for steadfast soldiers like Pablo A. Tariman, almost a one-man team in promoting these concerts through his articles, how would the seats have been filled up?

From the first moment Li Wei ran his bow across the strings of his cello, Anna sat up, noting, "Wow! Ang ganda ng tunog!" And sit up we did for the rest of the evening as he and Tiu brought alive Beethoven's Variations for cello and piano in E-flat Major on 'Bei Mannern welche Liebe fuhlen from Mozart's Magic Flute and Chopin's Sonata for Cello and Piano in G minor, Op. 65, the latter's significance being that the composer wrote more passages for the cello than the piano, his preferred instrument.

I must hand it to Li Wei and Tiu for being such good sports when some members of the overwhelmed audience clapped and broke their concentration in between movements. No harm there. World-class musicians like Cecile Licad acknowledge such applause with an indulgent smile and move on with their performance.

Beethoven and Chopin served as warm-up for the vigor required in the evening's last piece, Rachmaninoff's Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor Op. 19 whose allegro messo part carried the familiar tune that serves as DZFE's station ID music. Many times Li Wei tapped the sole of his shoe to the music or shook his head of hair in time. This time the two instruments seemed equal with each artist given time to display his prowess.

Needless to say, the audience wouldn't let them go. The encore was a heart-breaking interpretation of Saint Saens' "The Swan" which Li Wei proved to be a piece truly meant for solo cello. He played it sans score, from memory and with his eyes shut, Tiu providing the unobtrusive accompaniment. The duo received two standing ovations and obliged with a third encore, another Rachmaninoff piece.

Backstage, Li Wei received his new Filipino admirers with humility. As I pushed my copy of his and Tiu's recently launched CD of Beethoven sonatas, he said, "Let me just put this cello down." He strode to his dressing room, put the instrument gently in its case, removed his tunic, and proceeded to shake hands and sign autographs.

Earlier at the lobby, a table with boxes of jazz and classic CDs for sale was set up. The sight of such CDs has become rare in music stores. Again, needless to say, our respective budgets for the week were ruined as Anna and I riffled through the collection and found CDs of pianist Oscar Peterson, baritone Johnny Hartman, cellist Julian Weber playing Andrew Lloyd Weber compositions and the St. Louis Symphony performing Satie, Barber, among others.

There were sample sips of Novellino's line of wines, the dry red I recommend if the auditorium's air-conditioner is giving you the shivers. It was a lovely way to spend a Sunday evening, and I wish for more of the same.

Years from now, I might be able to claim, I witnessed the next Yo Yo Ma.

Tiu on piano, Li Wei on cello (Photo from Inquirer.net)

Vargas Llosa

And in keeping with his oft-repeated philosophical belief that novels should enhance and amplify life, not merely recount it, he has taken some liberties with history. But he quickly adds that 'with essential facts, I have been loyal.'"--interview with Mario Vargas Llosa in January Magazine, 2002.

It is a fact of literary history that Mario Vargas Llosa, this year's Nobel laureate for literature, visited the Philippines in the 1970s at the height of martial law and spoke before an audience of mainly Filipino writers at the annual Philippine Center of International P.E.N. conference at the Cultural Center's main gallery.

I was sent by my managing editor Neal Cruz to cover the conference and the guest speaker's talk, and it was one of the few times my account made the front page of the Philippines Daily Express. But the next day at the same venue, I received a gentle reproach from my former professor in stylistics, Nieves Epistola, who explained that I had wrongly referred to the Peruvian writer in subsequent paragraphs of my report as "Llosa." His complete surname is "Vargas Llosa," she said, the way Gabriel Garcia Marquez is "Garcia Marquez."

I have no copy of that report; I vaguely recall it had something to do with language, and the then dark-haired Vargas Llosa, garbed in a suit like the one in the picture, was, at some point, at a loss for words. He paused, gesticulated with his hands till he exasperatedly threw them and called English "this terrible language."

Later, at lunch, Rosalinda Orosa went up to him and engaged him in conversation in his native Spanish, and he felt more at ease.

I would read his books many years later when they became available. Two stand out in memory: In Praise of the Stepmother and The Feast of the Goat. The first was, for me, an eye-opener on how a novelist can push the envelope in terms of choosing a permissible subject--here we have a madrasta engaging in torrid sex with a minor who is actually the seducer.

The second had me thinking in many parts while reading, "This is so much like what happened to our country." The interlacing of sex and brutal power (South American dictators or many strong men have a reputation of being ladies' men or just run-of-the-mill rapists) has been noted in that novel, and I can't help recalling the short story "When Dovie Moans" by R. Zamora Linmark from the recently published anthology Mondo Marcos as I write this.

I'll have to visit the archives one day to look for a copy of that old news report on the dark-haired, pomaded man who came a-visiting and went on to win the Nobel.

In photo: this year's winner of the Nobel prize in literature

Get Shorty

For Cousin Shorty (Joseph Server) on his 70th birthday tomorrow

Shorty has always been in the periphery of my consciousness as far back as I can recall, he being the eldest cousin on my mother's side. Even then he was already Mister Funny Guy as opposed to his brother Fritz's deadpan humor. Shorty was hahaha, break-the-ice funny, especially in solemn moments, including his sister's wake.

I have memories of him as a slim, tall, bespectacled guy, his face covered with zits. Despite the geeky look, he was quite sure of himself then. He was still a bachelor with a nice waistline, but my Dad already predicted he would grow a wide girth like Daddy Dodo’s (Burton Joseph Server Sr.).

It was from Shorty that I heard the song “Maria” from the musical Westside Story before he and his sister Jane, my godmother, took my sister Evelyn and me to watch the film version at the Rizal Theater. Back in the old Server home on McKinley road, he had no qualms about singing at the top of his voice: “Maria, I just met a girl named Maria….” What sunk in my impressionable mind was if you feel at home right in your own home, what’s to stop you from singing aloud, even if you had a house guest, especially a kid like me who loved to observe people quietly?

So at home was he that he had friends from the Ateneo who had sleepovers at the his home library. One morning, they all trooped out of the door in their shorts and undershirts. A stark memory I have of that time was of this mestizo fellow, his curly hair standing up, looking dazed and unwashed. I learned later he was Xavier Loinaz. I vowed someday I’d have a house (for our family was gypsy-like then in its constant moving of houses), no matter how modest, where I could bring home my friends and later, my children’s friends, and host sleepovers.

One time Shorty dropped by my lola’s house in Sampaloc, Manila, where my parents, younger siblings, cousins , uncles and aunts and I were living in one big extended household in the early ’60s. It was our bedtime, but he hustled us kids into his big long car with no time to change into what my niece Bianca calls today “leaving” (pang-alis) clothes. I have a distinct memory of me in red flannel pajamas being treated to buko sherbet at the old Milky Way in Aguado, Manila, near Malacañang Palace. I don’t remember now what the occasion was, but it was he who brought us all there.

Early in his marriage to Lita Lotho, he addressed her “Palangga.” Of course, it was new to my ears so ever curious, I asked what it meant. His straight-faced answer was it was short for palanggana (wash basin), and I truly believed him. In my child’s mind, I linked palanggana to cleanliness, and Lita was, before she became a fulltime homemaker, a registered nurse after all. It was much later, when I got exposed to other Philippine languages, that I realized it was a term of endearment that means “beloved”.

When the German Hans Banzhaf came to live in Forbes Park as the new Server in-law, Shorty would make fun of the way he pronounced certain words in English, interchanging the “v’s’”, “f’s” and “w’s”. So Shorty would say over breakfast, “Babeth, please pass the weeneegar.” I was surprised that Hans never got pikon.

And the camera, of course! How can I think of Shorty without seeing a camera slung around his neck? He devotedly documented intimate and big family reunions. The stuff in our own family’s albums from the ’50s and ’60s could only have him as the source.

And when his own children arrived, I could see how much love he poured into his portraits of them as babies, toddlers and now, as parents with their own children. He even built his own darkroom. Having worked with newspaper photographers in darkrooms, I see now why he wanted to be involved in the process when he could easily afford to have the printing and enlargement jobbed out. Imagine a dear child’s image slowly emerging on photographic paper as it is placed gently from basin to basin until it is clipped on a line to dry.

It was from Shorty that I learned about quick response to emergencies and calamities. In 1968, the Ruby Tower collapsed in Sta. Cruz, Manila, after a strong earthquake. Many people were trapped in the rubble. I learned from Daddy that Shorty was out there, digging with other volunteers and rescuers. The image and lesson stayed with me—that one can risk life, the comforts of home and family and a cushy job for total strangers. That to be a person for others is what gives this brief journey on earth a semblance of time well spent.

Photo shows Shorty with camera (from Joseph Server's Facebook album)

Ruing My Zipping All Over Town Days

I woke up Thursday morning last week with a runny nose and a heavy head. I recognized the symptoms: the common cold has again set in, and its commonness, to mean regularity in visit, has shown cracks in my imagined invincible shield.

In Baguio, this minor discomfort is easily licked by an old family "recipe" shared by Padma Perez: a healing foot bath that calls for lots of lemon juice squeezed into a pail and mixed with pounded ginger. Pour hot water. Add drops of lavender oil (optional). Then soak your feet until water cools (depends on how hot you can stand it). While soaking, wrap yourself with a blanket. After the soak (or when the water cools), dry your feet, and go to sleep.

Simple but hard to duplicate in Manila where I step out of the shower, towel my body dry, then quickly begin to feel the beads of sweat forming on my forehead and around my neck.

A cold is inconvenient because it has become expensive to treat, and my doctor is perplexed why it has become a regular visitor in my life. She has ruled out dengue or a viral cause. She listens to my lungs, pronounces them clear so pneumonia is ruled out,too,but she's not taking chances so yesterday, she sent me down the lab for my second x-ray this year.Ohh, all that radiation, and it doesn't show on my face.

A cold is inconvenient because I wind up breaking appointments due to body malaise and weakness. Worse part is when I cancel plans in my cultural calendar of sorts. I like sharing in my friends' triumphs, watching them get acknowledged as another book is published or a life's career recognized.

Wednesday I watched an emotional Mario Miclat go up before the mike at the Shang to thank his family and circle of friends who saw him through the writing of his novel, Secret of the Eighteen Mansions. Although classified as historical fiction, it raises the curtain on the weaknesses and mistakes of the Maoist underground movement and reveals the top Party members' frailties. Many characters are thinly disguised, including the Chairman who goes by the initials AG (short for his nom de guerre Amado Guerrero, no doubt). Many friends feared for Mario's safety and the Chaiman's capacity to exact vengeance as they read pages of his draft but cheered him to go on as the time was ripe for these revelations. Now if AG makes patol to a work of fiction, he's even more deluded than we think.

Thursday was Edna Zapanta Manlapaz's turn to be feted. A beloved teacher at the Ateneo, she is one of two professors (the other being Soledad Reyes) who had the vision to see the need for and value of archival space for women writers' documents(expanded to include visual artists later) through the university's Library of Women's Writings.

Tuesday before that, Edna had hosted our bi-monthly First Draft dinner meeting at her La Vista Home. I was uncharacteristically late as I had just motored from Makati where another batch of girlfriends parted after a long, gossipy lunch. Gilda Fernando threatened in her text to finish all the sugar-free desserts if I didn't show up.

Edna always knows how to prepare an elegant table and a good spread from lemon coolers to just desserts. I missed Rita Ledesma's reading of her essay, accompanied by Lorna Kalaw Tirol's singing of song phrases from the manuscript. But Lorna was prepared for an encore to cap the evening. When she asked us what song we wanted to hear, Fe Arriola piped up, "Alfie."

And so the theme from the movie "Alfie" was in my head to console me on the afternoon I missed the festscrift for Edna. As sure as I believe, there's a heaven above, and this cold will be whipped before I miss out on any more vital cultural fare.

Photo by the blogger shows Lorna Kalaw Tirol (right) and other members of First Draft, Fe Arriola, Mariel Francisco and Karina Bolasco.

On World Teachers' Day, Mrs. E Once Again

Dedicated to the committed teachers in my family:

Rolly & Ida Fernandez, Eileen & Suzy Lolarga & Auntie Linda

"Hey, Teach, your hips are too wide!"--student Junald to Teacher Babeth

I considered myself a successful teacher on some level when my high school student in a weekly elective on creative writing came up to me recently after I laid my bag down on the classroom table and said that to my face with no inhibition. In the Catholic school where I grew up, he would've been called impertinent and sent to the guidance counselor's office.

I came into teaching rather late in life--at age 55. I held back for many years, despite worthy offers, because I held the profession in high esteem that I felt I had to accumulate decades of experience in my field of specialization and get almost browbeaten by life before I had the "K" or right to stand in front of a roomful of students. Yes, there were the summer workshops and weekend writing seminars I conducted but not the everyday commitment that real teaching required. At those workshops, I insisted on being addressed "Tita", not by any honorific like "Ma'am" or "Teacher."

The lessons learned from Nieves Benito Epistola or Mrs. E, the late professor emeritus of the University of the Philippines Diliman, have truly been internalized in midlife. She was genuinely interested in what her students were doing and talking about. In conversations, she would use the hip expression in current use.

Once, after a heavy lunch, she hailed a cab, then turned to me once we were inside, "Let's smoke in my office and watch the smoke rings come out of our mouth!" This was decades before the UP campus became a no-smoking zone.

Or, when a new shopping center ("mall" wasn't the common term then) went up, she'd eagerly invite me to "case the joint."

When her colleague and friend Dolores Stephens Feria was released from prison and returned to the university after years spent underground, she told Mrs. E, "Looking around, everyone has grown old and gray, except you, Nieves." That same day, Mrs. E rushed to Cubao and bought a pair of denim jeans.

She enlarged my world, she and husband SV bringing me to art exhibitions, foreign film festivals, Palanca Awards Night, concert halls, an orchid show at UP Los Baños and introducing me to a Who's Who in the arts and culture arena. She took it upon herself to gather my sheaf of poems and practically badger editor Franklin Cabaluna into publishing them in the literary section of his soft-porn magazine, Fina. She gave me the highest recommendation in my first reportorial job. She had my survey forms for my undergrad thesis mimeographed and disseminated by her own students to lessen my feelings of being overwhelmed at the academic requirements before me. And when my first book of poems was published and launched, she barged into the publisher's office the next day, demanding to buy the unsold copies.

Her carport-turned-porch on M. Viola street was a magnet for "kindred spirits," she called us, on Sundays in the early '80s; we hanged out there right after breakfast, overstretching the couple's hospitality by staying on till early dinner. Actress Gigi Dueñas quipped, "Mabuti na lang di alam ni Imelda (Marcos) about High Tea with the E's or else gagayahin niya rin."

This generosity of spirit, the sticking out of one's neck for one's student even way after she has graduated, is mostly lacking in teachers I've encountered when I went back to school at the same university in this decade. Overweening ambition/careerism, I surmise, generally defines the academics of today. Mrs. E once took the young instructors in the English department to task in a poem, dismissing them as "these young competitresses."

Even as she rose to become associate dean of the College of Arts and Letters, she did not demand an office with a view or one equipped with comforts and staff befitting the post. I still visited her at faculty room number 1118, the one assigned to her after she returned from Harvard and her other colleagues had earlier picked out the better located rooms. She gave me the spare key to that room one summer so I could concentrate on my freelance writing assignments when I was in between jobs. Later, I learned that she was not wont to do that with just anyone.

I suppose that was Mrs. E's personal and affirming legacy to me, the one I wish to pass on to my students: that I am, and they are, special.

"Hey, Teach, nice pants!"--Carem to Teacher Babeth

Poster grabbed from Gwenn Galvez's Facebook page

In 'Shock Value,' Infotainment Skewered Further

"I'm as mad as hell, and I won't be taking this anymore," raged a brilliantly mad news anchor played by Peter Finch in the '70s movie "Network." And he leads his millions of evening-news viewers in shouting the same line outside their windows. Ratings soar.

Dulaang UP's recent production "Shock Value" follows the argument of the cinematic satire that television, despite Sesame Street, Nat Geo and the Discovery Channel, has led to the severe dumbing down of a nation's citizens, and all for the greedy corporate cause of TV ratings.

Playwright Floy Quintos, who works for TV, knows where he's coming from when he wrote such caricature-ish characters as producer-host Matt Desaparecidos (shrewd but unwitting patsy in a network war), "distinguished" news anchor Dina Mañalac-Guevarra who has come down from covering plum straight news assignments to reporting on celebrity scandals, the fake love teams, the has-beens ("You’re so last year" goes a memorable line) desperate for a comeback, the no-talents just as hungry for a break, the screaming fags and PAs behind the scenes.

To add to the ambience of a TV soundstage, two wide LCDs are placed on opposite ends of the stage and a wider projector above the audience. The theater audience becomes part of the show, cued by a floor director to laugh, cry or applaud until they do it on their own. Laugh and scream at the right places.

It all begins with Matt being caught by a rival TV show about to sodomize a minor. From there the damage control takes off and lies are fed on more lies with the culprit making tearful onscreen confessions the way actors and similar celebrities caught in a no-no act do in daily/weekly TV, whether it's "Oprah" or "The Buzz."

Then it all becomes too much for Matt, and as his name suggests, he disappears…to the remote island of Polilio, Quezon, where TV, even radio, signals are weak. This builds up to a hilarious bidding of rival networks for images of him and his ex-lover embracing in reconciliation.

Director Alexander Cortez and the cast have put on quite a show that hits where it hurts. The merry mix of veteran actors and young theater arts graduates make for an interesting onstage chemistry although we found film actress Mylene Dizon weak of voice, even unable to suppress an attack of giggles when she misses her lines in the beach scene. When facing down the scene-stealing Frances Makil Ignacio as Dina, Dizon is simply out-glittered.

In another three years ("Shock Value" was originally staged in 2006), what new monsters will the TV medium breed? A character's portentous words at the closing of Act One: "We just dredge up old stuff and give it a new spin."

Photo from CINDERELLA MAYO's Facebook album