A mother always has a way of visiting you—from heaven, I presume. Mommy passed away in 2013, an ancient past by today’s social media calendar, yet last December 5, within the intimate walls of Sine Pop, I knew she was around, carried by the melody of the poignant kundiman I was enjoying in an intimate gathering. The setting on the ground floor of Sine Pop, walled off on one side by a panoramic glass window that framed the view of bamboo trees outside, was so intimate that it felt like a group hug.
Sine Pop
And the kundiman by 19th century Filipino composer Nicanor Abelardo (born 1893) reminded me of Mommy and bedtime. She would turn on the radio at night to listen to the kundiman by Abelardo, her fellow Bulakeño, which, like a lullaby, was meant to still us to sleep. We were obedient tots then—later on as we became little monsters, Abelardo’s kundiman would give way to the more effective tsinelas-for-spanking to enforce bedtime. (But I digress.)
Listening to the kundiman by Abelardo in the Chamber Music Series by Sine Pop made me feel nostalgic for a time whose flavor and taste I have already forgotten—until that night in early December at Sine Pop, there shielded from the hustle and bustle of Cubao. It reminded me of the time when the outside world couldn’t touch you because your own world designed by a mother was so untouchable—and simple. Her kundiman.
Sine Pop, the low-profile venue for special film screenings, intimate culture gatherings, and other meaningfully curated arts and lifestyle events, is holding small chamber music evenings featuring the works of Filipino composers. Nicanor Abelardo was just the start. Kundiman After Dark: Nicanor Abelardo for Her last December 5 featured soprano Stefanie Quintin-Avila, cellist Giuseppe Diestro, and maestro Augusto Espino on the piano.
Produced by Franz Ramirez, the Chamber Music at Sine Pop is turning out to be an anti-thesis to the mainstream culture calendar, or if not an antithesis, at least a parallel alternative. It is a platform for emerging Filipino musicians and artists—usually fresh graduates, or from the academe—to pursue their art and perform, and gain a growing audience. At Sine Pop, the 50 or so people who watch are there apparently because they make time to be there, because they like to experience the composer and the artist.
Before ‘Kundiman After Dark,’ the panoramic window of bamboo trees serves as cozy backdrop at Sine Pop
“How many of you took the MRT?” before the show, somebody asked the audience that filled every seat in the room. A few actually raised their hands, to the satisfaction of the organizers who wanted to prove that Sine Pop—the pre-war two-story house repurposed into a modernist, minimalist venue complete with a cinema—is actually only an MRT stop away, if you choose not to drive to St. Mary’s St. in Cubao.
The evening of music turned into easy conversation
Raising the intimate ambiance a notch higher, the artist performed right in front of you, like the audience is you alone. Ramirez, before each segment, talked about the composer, the composition, and the performer, like in TED Talks. Each program number became a narrative. The evening of music turned into easy conversation.
“It is music for friends,” Ramirez described the evening.
Ramirez and the organizers of Chamber Music at Sine Pop aim to prove that classical music is an accessible experience, and that there’s an audience to engage with Filipino classical artists. “If pop artists can command a good price, why not our classical artists who spend years in the training and rigor of their music?” said Ramirez.
Nicanor Abelardo’s great grandnephew Jojo de Jesus (center) and fellow Ateneo alumni Tony Feria (far left) and Carlson Chan
Young people continue to enrol in Music—that night’s performers, Quintin-Avila and Diestro, are graduates of and teach at the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Music, and Maestro Espino, himself an esteemed composer, is an institution in the faculty. Ramirez deems it his advocacy to give the young talent a path to a viable profession, as performing artists. “You ask some of them why they study music, what’s their career path after, though they can’t give concrete plans, you know it’s because they just love music,” Ramirez said.
Soprano Stefanie Quintin-Avila, accompanied by Maestro Espino, began the evening with the 1926 composition Bituing Marikit and Magbalik ka, Hirang (1925)—a pleading of love and return, perhaps among the most popular melodies of generations past, although we caught the GenZ beside us in rapt attention. The young soprano, heavy with child, reeled in the audience with a voice that alternated between a gentle sweetness—“malambing,” no better term—and a forcefulness that seared and soared in longing, almost in despair.
Under Diestro, a descendant of the great Filipino composer, the National Artist Lucio San Pedro, the cello achieved a strong rapport with the audience in Serenade in A Major for Cello & Piano (1922), Romanza para Cello y Piano (1921). It proved how the cello could be its most powerful when the audience was small, an instrument made to speak various nuances.
The Nocturne in C-minor (solo piano) was followed by Naku…Kenkoy! (1930) and
Ang Aking Bayan (1922). Not only was Abelardo a prolific genius; he also mined the kundiman for romantic love as well as love of country, in an era when the Philippines was yearning for independence. Ramirez explained to the gathering the genre that is the kundiman.
The culmination was Nasaan ka Irog (1923), and Abelardo’s most famous masterpiece, Mutya ng Pasig (1926), which Mommy loved to listen to night after night.
Dati akong paraluman
Sa kaharian ng pag-ibig
Ang pag-ibig ng mamatay
Naglaho rin ang kaharian
The poetry in words. The sadness in melody. The music would continue to play on my mind long after that evening at Sine Pop, the soprano Quintin-Avila’s imperious outburst stamped on my chest—Kung nais ninyong ako’y mabuhay Pag-ibig ko’y inyong ibigay. (Take note, this was in the ’20s, before woman empowerment, when women lived for love, and loved to live.)
It was special that the great grandnephew of Abelardo, Jojo de Jesus, was around and spoke about how he and his kin grew up drawn to music and how his lolo composed the masterpieces for friends who were to do the harana for the women they were trying to woo.
The next Chamber Music at Sine Pop featuring Nicanor Abelardo, this time for tenor, will be in January. Will it bring back memories of Daddy, this time, I wonder.
Read more:
Sine Pop featured in Monocle: Our cinema in the ‘bamboo forest’
