Living Legends

World-acclaimed pianist Cecile Licad will have another homecoming concert, this time with Lea Salonga and Lisa Macuja Elizalde along with the Filharmonika Orchestra under the baton of Gerard Salonga, at the Cultural Center of the Philippines main theater on Saturday, March 17, at 8 p.m.

Ms. Licad will play Chopin's Andante Spianato and Grand Polonaise with the Filharmonika orchestra and will do solo pieces namely Gottschalk’s Pasquinade, Bananiere and Souvenire d’ Andalouise. She will also play Saint-Saens The Swan with cellist Wilfredo Pasamba while prima ballerina Lisa Macuja Elizalde will interpret the piece in dance. In this special concert, Ms. Elizalde dances Minkus’s Paquita and excerpts from Romeo and Juliet; Lea Salonga sings Broadway favorites and the three of them will appear together in a special collaborative number.

After her CCP performance, Ms. Licad will have a solo recital at the Holy Angel University in Angeles City on March 22 (7:30 p.m.), at the Ciriaco Hotel and Resort in Calbayog City, Western Samar on March 24 (7 p.m.) and at the Marco Polo Plaza Hotel in Cebu City on March 27 (7:30 p.m.).

Her solo program includes Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat major, Op. 61; Three Mazurkas Op.56. Andante spianato et grande polonaise brillante in E-flat major, Op. 22 and Liszt’s Miserere du "Trovatore" de Verdi – Paraphrase de Concert and Après une Lecture de Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata.

The few remaining seats at the CCP performance are at orchestra center and orchestra left sections at P7,000 each, limited parterre boxes tickets at P5,000 each, a few upper box seats at P3,000 each, balcony 2 Center seats at P2,000 and balcony 2 sides seats at P1,000.

Give these numbers of Music News Service a call at (02) 7484152 or 0906-510-4270 for free delivery of tickets to the CCP, Pampanga and Samar performances.

Consider the Rose

for butones & her mamita gigi

how this picture
makes me think
of a man named luke
who wrote about his lord
who told him & other followers
to consider the lilies
that toil not, spin not

consider the rose, too,
admired by sister & grandchild
how its roots find home
in a pot so small
how it manages to bud,
then stand proud & tall
with little water, lots of sun
on a balcony up a windy hill

the rose has no name
except for a latin one
but it has a color though that draws
the eyes of sister & grandchild

another week & the velvety petals will fall
someone, maybe the baby's mother,
will pick them up, return them to the pot
till soil & crumpling petals are one

meanwhile, sister has gone a-toiling
like grownups are destined to do
grandchild is spinning
on her sunny balcony anew
& the rose, faded & gone by this time,
will array someone else's memo-ray

--Babeth Lolarga

Photo of Butones and her grandaunt Gigi Lolarga by Kimi Fernandez

Not the greatest performance of her life yet

She just brought home another bookend, that golden statuette whose true weight in gold may only be fifty dollars in today's recession in the US.

She must have coveted it, like the four other nominees, waiting there, wanting, willing, wishing that her name be called. Why else would she have sat through 17 Oscar nights, the number of times she was nominated and showed, or pretended to show, that she was happy when someone else bagged the prize? So 14 times she went home empty-handed. Billy Crystal got her there.

Yet she knows herself enough, is aware that at 62 going on 63, the members of the Academy may already be thinking, "Three is enough. We can continue nominating her, but let some young punk win best actress next time."

Yes, she is aware that this may be the last of the coveted prizes in a town where the young, the buffed, the svelte with some years in drama school to make their resumes gleam are exalted. Who knows? This may have been the same town where a term like "trophy wife" was first coined.

How much of her magic comes from knowing herself deeply and also having a loyal hair and makeup stylist all these decades? When she has no project and the stylist is off servicing another actor on another film, what does this woman, who has come to represent women's voices, not just their accents, mind you, do and think?

Let the movie scribes write their conjectures: how she must have felt the depths of true love and loss as lover to fellow actor John Cazale, staying with him till he breathed his last; how she relearns to open her heart and allow another love in, have a superbly normal family life with a sculptor who, being an artist himself, understands the demons she wrestles with as she gets into character.

What this admirer from afar, who has followed her from the TV mini series Holocaust to where she stood onstage this morning, golden and shimmering like the statuette she clasped, would like to see is Meryl Streep studying the life, then playing the role, of Georgia O'Keefe. O'Keefe in her 90s, mind you again, but still infused with the prickliness of a desert cactus. And Ms. Streep doing it as she enters her 70s.

Photo from Getty Images

Biyaheng Pampanga, Samar & Cebu

Cecile Licad’s solo outreach program includes Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat major, Op. 61; Three Mazurkas op. 56. Andante spianato et Grande Polonaise Brillante in E-flat major, Op. 22 and Liszt’s Miserere du “Trovatore” de Verdi—Paraphrase de Concert and Après une Lecture de Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata.

She will be heard at the Holy Angel University in Angeles City, Pampanga,on March 22; at the Ciriaco Hotel in Calbayog City, Western Samar, on March 24, and at Cebu City’s Marco Polo Plaza Hotel on March 27. Call 7484152 or 0906-5104270 for ticket reservations and free delivery within Metro Manila.

Schedule sourced from: http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/36727/music-and-the-arts-in-cebu

Photo from the blogger's files

Living to a hundred

Living to a hundred

Thinking of the 8th of March Again

"This was, in (Virginia) Woolf’s view, the archetypal female writer’s fate: 'so thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty.' It is far easier, she suggests, to find 'some Emily Brontë who dashed her brains out on the moor' than one who 'blazes out' of obscurity."-- Edward Rothstein

this doesn't hold true for our women, ms woolf

in our country
women who write paint sing dance sculpt
or build & at the same time need to
cook launder & iron clothes
then run to nurse a wailing infant
are better than circus artists
who cross a high wire without
a pole to balance their steps
or a safety net below to break a fall

we live by chance or by choice
in large extended entangled families
in compounds & complexes
where in-laws & such
poke their noses into our affairs

so much for a room of one's own

in our home hangs
an old norma belleza oil painting

imagine the making of it
she lets the beef stew simmer on low fire
while she makes time to
lean a canvas supported by a chair
against a paint-streaked wall

she quickly fills up the blank space with colors
& images of fish-mongers & flower vendors
dignified by the work they do

or pays homage to the unpaid
full-time homemaker seated
at the edge of the marriage bed
done with the day's chores
tired wistful but still awake
awaiting her man's return

by the time the painter signs her name
the beef is tender the potatoes and carrots chewable
the greens still crisp in their greenness
the broth hot rich & soothing

whether painter or writer
peace advocate or impassioned ideologue
dancer modestly covering or
baring breasts in a smooth gesture of grace
our women resist the tug of
the swirling waters of despair

as for our pockets filled with stones
we choose pebbles
to improvise rattles
& similar noisemakers
for the little women after us

--Babeth Lolarga

Source of quote: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/arts/design/shakespeares-sisters-at-the-folger-shakespeare-library.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
Collages from Babeth's series "What If Virginia Woolf Had Children?"

This avid ‘collectioner’ knows when to let go

This avid ‘collectioner’ knows when to let go