(Talk delivered at the selection committee of the National Performing Arts Companies, City State Tower Hotel, Ermita, Manila, May 9, 2024.)
I am here to take up the profiles of three orchestral ensembles, each quite different from each other in terms of their history and the music genre they represent.
The first is the Kapuluan, the second is the University of the Philippines Symphony Orchestra and the last, the Manila Symphony Orchestra.
Although I am described as an “expert” in my field for coverage of the performing arts in the last 48 years, I must admit now I know very little about Kapuluan although I know the professional backgrounds of people involved in it. Moreover, I caught some of its performances on television.
I have seen the videos, the background of the genre it represents and I must say that for all the musical vision it represents, it deserves government support.
From what I can figure out in the backgrounder submitted to the National Performing Arts Companies, KAPULUAN is a hybrid Philippine orchestra that involves use of Philippine traditional instruments and voices with western instruments. Its repertoire consists of Philippine traditional music that are expanded, as well as new pieces that are collaboratively created. This hybrid orchestra involves traditional chanters, solo instrumentalists, and music ensembles that provide the primary melodic, rhythmic, and timbral inputs, as well as a strings section (violins, violas, cellos, and double basses) and a choir that provide harmonic and drone support as well as melodic structure. It involves dancers from Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao to provide kinesthetic contributions.
The organizers behind Kapuluan point out the ensemble differs from other indigenous music ensembles. The Kapuluan uses some western instruments and voices to complement the Philippine traditional ones. It draws music and musicians not only from Philippine Indigenous groups but also from Islamized and Christianized Philippine communities. But most of all, its repertoire is built around collaboration among traditional artists and western music-trained composers. In the landscape of Philippine orchestras, the people behind Kapuluan believe their presence in the country’s musical landscape will fill a gap that should be supported by the government and Filipino audiences as well.
Since there are not that many ensembles of this kind in the country, I believe Kapuluan is worthy of government support.
Now let’s go to the orchestra ensembles as they exist in the country’s music scene.
First, let’s have a quick look into the state of Filipino orchestras and how they survive and later how some of them die a natural death.
Apart from the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra which is subsidized by the Cultural Center of the Philippines, we have the Manila Symphony Orchestra founded in 1926, the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra born in the 90s and has lately catered to purely commercial demands of its patrons. They have to do it just to survive.
From past experiences, we know that even orchestras with corporate support have a hard time flourishing. To illustrate, the San Miguel Philharmonic supported by San Miguel Corporation died an unnatural death and so did the ABS CBN Philharmonic at the height of the pandemic when the network lost its franchise. However, they still support the Orchestra for Filipino Youth which hopes to bring about a new generation of musicians.
Among the active ones, we have the University of the Philippines Symphony Orchestra (UPSO) supported by the state university in Diliman.
The UPSO came into being only in 2018 when the UP College of Music brought up the idea of a university orchestra. According to the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Philippine Performing Arts Directory, the UPSO embodies the university’s commitment to excellence. “It is a repertory orchestra for musicians, laboratory orchestra for Filipino composers, and a training orchestra for young conductors.”
UPSO is also known by another name, the Orkestra ng Bayan.
Not having seen its inaugural concert, I attended the latest concert of the UPSO under Chino Toledo at the Samsung Theater for the Performing Arts.
Friday night on May 3, the UPSO showcased a unique program of Wagner (Ride of the Valkyries from “Die Walküre”), Olivier Messiaen’s Les Offrandes Oubliées) and Ramon P. Santos’s rarely performed (Penomenon) capped by Puccini’s Messa di Gloria.
On the whole, it was an excellent concert with intelligent programming and with conductor Toledo clearly in command as a music director.
That the orchestra did a snappy reading of a unique piece called Penomenon by Ramon Santos was another reason for it to get government support. That night, audiences got to savor Asian sounds blending with Western orchestral dynamics. Like it or not, the composition reflects the essence of the seldom performed work of Ramon Santos who is one of our distinguished National Artists for Music. That it has conducted outreach concerts in the Visayas and Mindanao is a sign it is reaching out to Pilipino music lovers in the countryside.
For its vision and initial concert feedbacks, UPSO is worthy of government support. The people behind it are in the profiles submitted to the National Performing Arts Companies as well as its staff component.
On the other hand, the Manila Symphony Orchestra founded in 1926 by an Austrian conductor Alexander Lippay has survived the second world war and has nurtured the first generation of Filipino musicians, among them the legendary violinist Ernesto Vallejo, Basilio Manalo and Oscar Yatco. Now it has survived with young musicians filling in for its previous members and those who have joined other orchestra ensembles.
Exactly 79 years ago on May 9, 1945, the historic post-liberation concert of the MSO under Herbert Zipper took place at Sta. Cruz Church. The historic musical event was reported in Time and Life Magazines.
In the late 80s, the MSO was fighting for its life even as Maestro Zipper worked very hard to get support. Ms. Conchita Sunico, then executive director of the Manila Metropolitan Theater asked me to work with Maestro Zipper for his farewell concert at the Met.
Shortly after, Maestro Zipper died. At the time, the musicians who worked with MSO moved over to the other existing orchestra. It was then that Prof. Basilio Manalo in cooperation with St. Scholastica’s College moved to train young musicians. In time, the MSO was infused with new blood and was saved from extinction.
The MSO is still alive and has since then been a part of the musical diet of Filipino music lovers.
As MSO is part of the country’s history, I am for giving unequivocal support to the MSO Foundation which supports it. For the record, it is the country’s oldest orchestra which has existed in the past 98 years with a rich history of sharing classical music with Filipino audiences. It has an illustrious history of conductors, guest artists, musicians and supporters, several of whom have become national artists. It’s commitment to orchestral excellence has enabled it to be invited in important music festivals in China in 2019 and in Japan in 2022. It’s youth project, the Manila Symphony Junior Orchestra (MSJO) is the only orchestra in the country that has won First Prize in the Summa Cum Laude Music Festival in Austria in 2018 and the World Music Festival in 2021 in Vienna. Among the other orchestras in the country, the MSO has the most winners of the National Music Competition for Young Artists (NAMCYA) in both its main orchestra and in the MSJO.
For another, the MSO Foundation is supporting a well-structured program that not only focuses on performances of its main orchestra, the MSO. It has also branched out into education through the MSO Music Academy which trains new members of the Manila Symphony Junior Orchestra. They have the Basilio Manalo Music Scholarship Program that provides support to musicians studying in local conservatories, and the Standard Insurance International scholars that provide support for deserving young artists to study in top music schools abroad. It has created projects that also provide orchestral training in public schools through its partnership with Makati City. These projects, aside from being self-sustaining, also help sustain its main orchestra and provide additional income to its musicians. These also help develop an audience for orchestral music and a source of highly trained musicians that will raise the level of orchestral music in the country.
As it is, the MSO is the only non-government orchestral organization in the country that has committed to provide regular monthly salaries to its musicians since 2009, and has committed to self-produce a regular season concert of orchestral masterworks that involves top local and international guest artists with a varied program that include symphonies, concertos, ballet music, opera, modern compositions, Filipino works, as well as symphonic arrangements of popular music.
The support from the National Performing Arts Companies can do a lot.
The financial support will enable the MSO to add more to its season concerts from 6 to 8 annually. On top of that, this government support will provide opportunities for more outreach concerts in the provinces.
At present, the MSO Foundation is headed by Chairman Antonio Cojuangco and President Marianne Hontiveros, with Jeffrey Solares as Executive Director. It currently conducts regular rehearsals at the MSO Recital Hall at the Ayala Malls, Circuit, Makati, while performances are done in various available concert locations around Metro Manila. The MSO Recital Hall also serves as a venue for recitals and chamber music performances, as well as for group classes of the MSO Music Academy and the MSJO.
MSO Foundation by giving unequivocal support to the MSO aim is to contribute to nation-building through its manifold work of discovering, nurturing, and presenting Filipino musical talent and giving it the opportunity to thrive and become proponents of national transformation.
As it is, the MSO is surviving on support from private sectors.
I believe it can do more with government support.
We just have to remember that MSO became part of the country’s history when it was founded by Alexander Lippay on January 22,1926 at the Manila Grand Opera House under the auspices of the Asociacion Musical De Filipinas.
The MSO also performed at the inauguration concert of the Metropolitan Theater on 10 December 1931 under the auspices of the newly formed Manila Symphony Society led by Mrs. Filomena Legarda.
When Alexander Lippay passed away in 1939, he was replaced by Herbert Zipper as conductor the same year. Zipper was once a prisoner at Dachau then the Buchenwald concentration camp before getting liberated and journeyed to the Philippines in 1939. Zipper expanded the activities of the orchestra and formed the Manila Concert Chorus.
During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in 1942, Zipper was briefly detained by the Japanese as a “political prisoner” and the Manila Symphony Orchestra refused to perform as a protest and hid its instruments.
Following the liberation of the Philippines in 1945, the Manila Symphony Orchestra was reorganized with Zipper conducting its first post-liberation concert held in the ruins of Santa Cruz Church 98 years ago on May 9, 1945.
Last May 4, I attended what may well turn out as the best attended MSO concert at the Samsung Theater for Performing Arts in Circuit Makati.
It featured Finnish guest conductor Sasah Makila and the Filipino cello prodigy Damodar das Castillo.
The audience response was overwhelming and more so for the Filipino cello prodigy.
It is a good sign that Filipino orchestras can co-exist and could complement each other.
I believe government support should not only apply to one. It can very well apply to the three orchestral ensembles: the Kapuluan, the UP Symphony Orchestra and more so for the Manila Symphony Orchestra.
As is often said, it takes a village to sustain an orchestra. Hoping we all give orchestra ensembles the support they deserve. We owe it not just to ourselves but to the new generation of Filipino musicians not to mention the new generation of concert audiences.