Music on a Monday

Oliver Salonga in concert last night at the Ayala Museum lobby. He began with something very modern or 20th century (it had atonal and dissonant qualities), Samuel Barber's Piano Sonata in E-flat Minor, Op. 26, then moved without a break to Rachmaninoff's Etude Tableaux, Op. 33 and ended with the more traditional sounds of Franz Liszt's Reminiscences de Norma du Bellini. The Scarlatti sonata that he played as an encore really gripped my heart. It's the sort of music I like to cry along with, but it was a happy night so no tears, except for the thunderstorm that raged outside. Photo by Anna Leah Sarabia

From boy to big man of the piano, we've watched him grow to even teach us how the Rachmaninoff etudes "are not like Chopin etudes that target a specific technique for each etude. The etudes teach you to apply different techniques based on what's written with emphasis on the actual application rather than a mastery of a certain technical device." Photo by Anna Leah Sarabia

Oli triumphant. His friends from his Makiling years still like to call him "Berong," short for Keroberong or a Filipinized version of "Care Bear" because of his chubbiness. He's a graduate of the Philippine High School for the Arts in Laguna. He's winding up his Ph.D. studies in piano performance at the University of Southern California under Norman Krieger. Photo by Anna Leah Sarabia

At almost any recital in any venue, an appreciative audience that includes neurosurgeon and art patron Joven Cuanang and sculptor Julie Lluch likes to have a moment with the musical artist to hold his hand or hug him. As an aside, Julie is teaching herself to play the piano after she had her upright at home tuned up. Photo by Babeth Lolarga

"Music speaks what cannot be expressed, soothes the mind and gives it rest, heals the heart and makes it whole, flows from heaven to the soul." - Unknown

"...(M)usicians are willing to give their entire lives to a moment - to that melody, that lyric, that chord, or that interpretation that will stir the audience's soul. Musicians are beings who have tasted life's nectar in that crystal moment when they poured out their creative spirit and touched another's heart. In that instant, they were as close to magic, God, and perfection as anyone could ever be. And in their own hearts, they know that to dedicate oneself to that moment is worth a thousand lifetimes."-David Ackert, Los Angeles Times

The unknown author of that quote and Mr. Ackert I must thank profusely and publicly for giving me a good shove so I can recall in a semi-tranquil mood the times the musical "guns of August" fired and caused a pleasurable trembling in my soul. I've used an Ackert quote in a past blog about pianist Cecile Licad, but I keep coming back to it.

There's almost a "near-suicidal" quality to a true musician's playing. It's in the way they give their all to an elusive moment that will quickly become a memory for the listener unless everything, every nuance of a note or a gesture, is caught in an audio-video recording. Otherwise, there is nothing more exciting, more electrifying than being present in a live performance. Especially if it is someone like Oliver who I first watched at his farewell recital at the then PCIBank's Francisco Santiago Hall in Makati before he first left for his undergrad music studies in the States.

I've seen him at a tertulia at Odette Alcantara's Heritage House in Blue Ridge, Quezon City, where he attempted to do the folk ditty "Pamulinawen" as his encore piece. After repeated mistakes, he apologized and instead played a longer and more difficult Chopin piece. This has led to my impression that Oliver doesn't take the easier path. Gusto niya talagang pahirapan ang kanyang sarili.

And it's good for him. We, the audience, also benefit. I've also watched him play at the Baguio Country Club ballroom, at the former Kiss the Cook Gourmet at UP Village to kick off the Pablo Tariman-initiated Intimate Concert Series, at Abelardo Hall last year and then last night at a museum. Oliver is a life force, indeed, like the backdrop of paintings by Jana Benitez. Unsolicited advice from a concerned tita: Lose some of the weight. It may keep your stamina up.

The pictures tell of my latest experience of him better.

Thanks for putting this recital together, Ray Sison of ROS Music Center, Pablo Tariman of Music News and the Ayala Museum for opening up the lobby space on a Monday and a holiday (yesterday was the advanced celebration of National Heroes Day). Don't ever be discouraged by slight weather disturbances or the challenge of producing and marketing a recital.

When I think of contemporary heroes, politicians never cross my consciousness or my radar. It's always the authentic artists and tireless cultural workers who do. They are the ones who take the greater risks and make a nation truly proud and great. And people like me, a mere music fan, are grateful. Once again, Oliver, bravo!

The ordinary and the ecstatic

Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.

-William Martin

On an ordinary day in the week just ended, I got up after hours of reading, sitting and trying to put words together to stretch a bit, see what's going in the world outside the nook where I do my work.

From a corner of my mother's kitchen, I saw this play of light and shadow. If I only knew how to turn on the video component of an old digicam, I would've recorded the dancing shadows of the atis tree from outside, how the sun during the sunset hour caused this shadow play to happen.

Yes, Mr. Martin, I feel like that ordinary child who happened upon something extraordinary.

Thank you, oh Divine Master, who leads us not into temptation but to visions of the ecstatic in the every day.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Meanwhile, on the shore of the living

"Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces."
--Matthew 7:6

"Pearls don’t lie on the seashore. If you want one, you must dive for it."
--Chinese proverb

Some things keep me awake longer than usual at night. Among them is the origin of expressions. One is "Do not feed your pearls to swine."

And on the matter of pearls, why do we use the phrase "pearls of wisdom?"

It may sound silly, I know, these nocturnal activities of mine. In the morning, the brooding has fled after six to eight hours of quality sleep.

Meanwhile, I've stored this image of a piglet in red boots in my hard drive for several months now, waiting for that moment when I can trot it out like taking a pet for a walk.

A woman from Corfu, Greece, Anna Papadopoulou, who I follow in Twitter, shared this. She likes to post her gathered treasures of photos and videos around the time I'm about to take dinner or should be turning in for the night. When I thank her with a photo I've taken, she responds in the same manner. While I'm already calling it a day, she is just getting warm after breakfast. We've had this relationship for months now.

It's a nice feeling--to know that I'm not alone in learning to dive deeper and deeper into myself, to rise up, then share my own little pearls here and there (for want of a better word, I use "pearls"). And Ms. P, I suppose, is also doing the same.

Here's to you, Ms. Papadopoulou, wherever you are. Mabuhay and good morning from where I am.

A paper person

                                                             Photo by Babeth Lolarga

I'm like Emma Paloma, ICM; we're both paper persons. If you are one, then you're easy to please. Apart from books that we read and later share or give away, you and I like stationery and other paper products. And we use them. Constantly! Especially now in the age of convenient email and texting. We don't hoard or collect. That way we spread the good lovin'.

My youngest child (although she's an adult of 27 years) recently sent me through her older sis this pair of cards from Hanoi where she had another adventure of her young life.

These cards didn't last a week with me. They're on their way to parts outside the Philippines, one to Florida, the other to Virginia. In one card, I couldn't bear writing on it so I wrote on a separate sheet of paper. That way my friend can use the blank card, just find the right envelope to slip it in and send it off to another receiver who, I hope, will be delighted.

The illustrations are actually collages. The crafts person, in all likelihood a woman, cut small strips of cloth (probably the retazo from a real ao dai) and turned them into these six beauties on bikes, complete with sun hats.

Here's to penmanship and paper.

It will come to me again

Detail from Leonard Aguinaldo's "Blog Entry No. 7," mixed media collage, 2013. Recently exhibited at the Indigo Gallery of Bencab Museum on Asin Road, Benguet. Photo by Babeth Lolarga

"Pay attention to poetry. Pay attention to music. Pay attention to paintings and sculptures and photo exhibits and ballets and plays. Why? Because art is God's way of saying hello. Your world is shouting out to you, revealing something intrinsically glorious about itself. Listen carefully. Love art, the way art loves life. Don't let all this go unnoticed." - quote attributed to Neale Donald Walsch

My college classmates and I learned in the editing class of Prof. Raul R. Ingles how the serif font Times Roman is the preferred one for newspapers. Today any serif font is also the norm for “long reads,” as essays and other forms of prose are now called. The human eye is used to reading serif fonts.

Sans serif fonts like the classic Helvetica, Optima, Courier, Arial or Trebuchet MS, the one that I’ve lately been using for my blog entries, are best used for short compositions. Optima is especially preferred for the text of compositions that have a ruminating or philosophical quality. I remember Optima well because art director Lynett Villariba chose it for Jerry Araos's book, The Garden of Two Dragons Fucking (Miratala Books, 1992).

Yes, I promised myself this would be short—just to keep the words flowing before I shift to another writing activity. I often have this thought in mind. It’s beginning to sound more like a declaration so God will heed and help me: that once I’m done with the reading of some books and the writing of my reviews of them, I will finish an unfinished painting I set aside last year. By completing it, I shall dabble with brushes and paints again. Ever heard of painter’s block? Well, I’ve been dealing with it in the aftermath of super typhoon Yolanda.

It’ll come back. I say it with some confidence because now and then I also feel bereavement when, as the song goes, “words don’t come easy.” That's when it's time to do other stuff.

Hello Wednesday—I didn’t forget to acknowledge your presence.

P.S. The title for today's blog entry is from that Mary Travers solo song of almost the same name: "It Will Come to You Again."

The girl with intense eyes

I've taken maybe over a thousand pictures already of this girl, but none satisfies me as much as this random shot. She was waiting for her mother to return to the great-grandma's abode and then to be taken back to her highland home. See you in a week or two again, not so little button of my heart.  She has said goodbye to us temporarily, to the lower land's humidity and prickly heat. Early tomorrow she says hello again to a kinder clime and her friend, the fog. Photo by Booboo Babeth

Teepee Aguilar, soprano of the hour

Teepee with her assisting artist, pianist Farley Asuncion, and her dad, architect Efren Aguilar  Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Of the adjectives that have been used to describe the voice of lyric soprano Stephanie Anne “Teepee” Aguilar, the ones that have captivated me best as listener-admirer are “creamy” and “radiant.”

More will be added to the list when we watch and listen to her again at the professional debut recital of this 2012 Jovita Fuentes Vocal Competition prize winner on Aug. 20, Wednesday, at 7 p.m. at Ayala Museum.

The Manila Chamber Orchestra Foundation (MCO) Foundation has made of the museum lobby its presenting stage for most of its concerts this year (in July, it was the renamed Lanuza Hall at the Philippine Stock Exchange bldg. in Pasig City for the memorable Mostly Mozart Festival).

And it’s also almost SOP for the MCO Foundation workhorses (executive director Angel Reyes Nacino and consultant Joseph Uy—they with the biblical names) to bring the talents for live patikim presentations at Bert Robledo’s noontime program, “Bravo Filipino,” over DZFE The Master’s Touch (that’s 98.7 on your FM dial).

For just this past Thursday’s radio program, Teepee prepared Mozart’s “Or sai chi l’onore,” Anna’s aria from Don Giovanni; Schubert’s “Gretchen Am Spinnrade”; the American spiritual “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” arranged by Margaret Bonds; and Nicanor Abelardo’s “Mutya ng Pasig.”

With DZFE's Bert Robledo

When he learned that she earned her first bachelor’s degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management, major in hospitality management, from the College of St. Benilde, he said in deadpan fashion (off the air), “Puwede ka ring singing  kaldero.”

She said her mother Gigi, who’s good on the piano and works as an interior designer, wanted her only child to take a college course that would reassure her of a future.

But Teepee has been singing since she was three, a soloist no less in nursery school. Her father Efren recalled how Teepee was always chosen as choir leader during her elementary and high school years at the Tabernacle of Faith Christian Academy in San Juan, Metro Manila. For a time she was choir director of The Word Community Church which holds its Sunday worship at Unilab’s Bayanihall Hall in Mandaluyong.

Until a friend invited her to the University Santos Tomas, and in 2009 she entered its Conservatory of Music. She said of that decision, “I prayed to God, telling Him singing is what I do best. Let’s see how far God will take me.” She began as part of the big chorus in Cavalleri Rusticana. Manong Bert quipped that the experience put her literally in the pits (orchestra pit).

Singing live at the DZFE studio with Farley Asuncion on the piano

Asked what makes a good opera singer, she mentioned talent and finding good teachers who would notice the talent and hone it (in her case, soprano Rachelle Gerodias in the beginning and now tenor Lemuel de la Cruz), dedication, heart  (“You’ve got to love what you’re doing, memorize different languages and blockings and making all these look flawless”), and hard work.

Again Manong Bert couldn’t help quipping that the likes of Anne Curtis have a lot of hard work to do.

Teepee’s schedule these days include studying for roles on her own (she’s appearing in the operas Noli Me Tangere and La Boheme) before turning up for rehearsals, practicing with a pianist or whoever is teaching or directing her and the others. She said she enjoys preparing for an opera because it’s “grand, colorful and always big."

She ended her hour-long interview interspersed with singing at DZFE with “He's Got the Whole World in His Hands.” Manong Bert couldn't help saying how compelling the spiritual was in the light of Robin Williams’ suicide, saying, “There’s no need to feel hopeless, no matter what you’re experiencing or going through.” - Elizabeth Lolarga

Relaxing after the interview 

For tickets to Stephanie Aguilar's concert, call TicketWorld at 891-9999, the MCO Foundation at 750-0768 or 0920-954-0053 or CAEO at 762-7164 or 0918-3473027. 

Here's to solitary dining

Cab Cafe usually serves its coffee in a paper cup, even if you're dining in. Ask for a mug--the coffee tastes just the same and you save on paper and plastic stirrer. Photos by Babeth Lolarga

“Because we all need somebody to talk to, somebody that will listen, somebody that understands.” - a tweet from Inspirational Quotes

Often I find myself talking to whoever just happens to be reading this blog or past blog entries after he/she accidentally "hits" it in search of something else. Other times I share the day's content out there to friends and family who give a word or two of encouragement. 

Otherwise, I talk to myself most of, if not, all the time. I do the talking not too loudly though. Otherwise, my “frenemies’” suspicions about my eccentricity, a.k.a. weirdness, will be confirmed. And there are some people out there who delight in others’ pratfalls. It is not a kind world, unfortunately for the sensitive.

Where was I before the taho vendor’s cries interrupted my concentration? I’m supposed to make a strong pitch for the occasional meal enjoyed with oneself, not with some Other (be it partner, child, grandchild, parent, sibling or friend). I call it a form of decompressing so I don’t suffer from what divers call “bends” when resuming my routine and becoming a social being again.

Yesterday from late morning to apres-lunch, I was with kindred spirits or fellow cultural workers. One of them referred to ourselves as alipin ng sining (slaves to art and culture). I always bristle like a porcupine when I hear the word alipin. I like to correct the phrase, to think of ourselves as “art warriors in aid of peace.”

But even warriors need a rest day. No, it’s only Friday today, and there are two more writing deadlines to be met. These deadlines are largely self-imposed, but I want to meet them in the quickest, most efficient way possible. 

For me to do that, I must decompress first the way a diver must go up slowly from the depths of the ocean lest he/she suffer from the bends and get paralyzed. So after that meeting-cum-coverage-cum-interview-cum-shared meal, I headed home but stopped over at good ole reliable Cab Café on East Capitol Drive, Barangay Kapitolyo, Pasig. I was desperately in need of a caffeine fix to stay awake and finish a hanapbuhay article. The cake chiller was tempting, but I’m always careful about my sugar intake. 

There was a slice of cherry “cheesecake.” It had no cream cheese in it. Deceptive, right? Instead, the sumptuous red cherries that sported a come-hither look were sitting on a lump of yogurt, the yogurt sat grandly like a princess on a round savory biscuit. Think crown, think princess, think throne. 

Whoever in the kitchen-bakery thought of this must be congratulated. I’ve always had a taste for the sour (okay, here’s where you make jokes about my increasingly sour disposition).

Hurray for “decompression chambers”, those way stations between being a social being and being a completely solitary person once one returns home to face an empty Microsoft Word page, a throbbing cursor, a waiting angel (or devil) that one must wrestle down to keep the flow of words going and going without disappearing.

P.S. My bill didn't even exceed P200, and I got the drafting and writing done before midnight. Oy vey!