‘Mga Awit ng Pag-ibig at Kundiman’ is on May 14, Thursday, 6:30 pm, MiraNila Heritage House.
The seemingly mute but elegant MiraNila Heritage House at 26 Mariposa Street, Barangay Bagong Lipunan, Crame in Quezon City, is witness next month to a one-night concert that pays tribute to Filipino music pillars like Nicanor Abelardo, Francisco Santiago, Constancio de Guzman, Ernani Cuenco, Levi Celerio, and Augusto Espino, among others.
Tenor Arthur Espiritu
The May 14 concert features the live performance of world-acclaimed tenor Arthur Espiritu and soprano Stefanie Quintin-Avila, a tambalan or partnership that has set music aficionados a-titter because the repertoire consists of all kundiman. The occasion marks the launch of a National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) recording that digitally preserves Filipino classics performed by the country’s two finest voices. The repertoire traces the kundiman’s evolution from patriotic beginnings to zarzuela, love songs and modern art songs.
Everyone’s excited, including and especially Petty Benitez-Johannot of the Benitez-Tirona MiraNila Foundation Inc. She is helping widen the house’s public through events like “concerts for the more mature audiences and films for the millennials and younger Gen Zs. We offer brief visits to the house that encourage people to know more and be curious about heritage and history.”
Soprano Stefanie Quintin Avila
The forthcoming Mga Awit ng Pag-ibig at Kundiman with Espiritu, Quintin-Avila, and pianist Najib Ismail at the MiraNila Gallery is also a fund-raiser for the 97-year-old structure, the only landmark house of the National Historical Commission in Quezon City that is privately run.
East Garden and the Gallery, MiraNila
Benitez said of the challenges such a standing requires: “Supporting and sustaining it with no assistance from the local government unit and national agencies has presented challenges, but we’ve found a way through partnerships with The Blue Leaf that runs and manages the East Garden and the Gallery MiraNila, the latter an events space built upon what we fondly called the Bungalow during my grandparents’ time, plus with Bizu Catering Studio that runs and manages a 30-seat restaurant soon to reopen as Al Bacchio, and lastly, with MiraNamin Nest, a newly renovated 10-suite airbnb owned and run by family members. These partnerships sustain a small staff to maintain the house and grounds, pay our taxes, and run the house as a museum and library. We have many of the same staff who worked with our aunt, Helena Z. Benitez, when she was still alive.”
MiraNamin roof deck facing west
But will a classical concert help finance the upkeep of this majestic place? She answered, “Since we started featuring independent films and concerts, the latter with cellist Damador Das Castillo, and immediately afterwards, the Manila Symphony Junior Orchestra in March and April 2025, we discovered that a whole different audience is out there who are not familiar with heritage concerns. As the mandate of the foundation board is to widen MiraNila’s public, these events were effective ways of doing it. These concerts and films are held only during the first and last quarters of the year. They’ve nonetheless financed all our conservation efforts, from the 1904 Steinway grand piano, to the most at-risk paintings and sculptures. We now focus on period furniture and restoring and replacing our tegula roof, ceilings and support beams. Poco a poco se va lejos, as the elders would say: Slowly, slowly, we can go far. We work with a fine team of restoration experts.”
Tour group in front of a painting by Botong Francisco
A reminder sent to the would-be concert audience is to wear soft-soled shoes. Benitez explained. “The natural wear and tear of going through rooms and walking on the narra floors will endanger any house. While our mandate is to share our history and heritage with a wider public, we are also tasked to keep the house and grounds for future generations. How do we balance these? We do these walk-throughs of about 15 minutes going through the ground floor before the film and concert events. We offer normal tours of about 1.5 hours that are pre-booked for no less than seven and no more than 25 persons at a time. Our security is tight at all times. These tours happen only every so often.”
Gallery MiraNila interior and exterior
An art historian, Benitez said houses like MiraNila contain objects that “have secret lives. Sharing these after years of research and hearing from our family and audiences about their own experience of certain periods in our past add to varied and lively discussions with guests who tour the house. It is a great pleasure for our guides and me to make the heyday periods of this house, pre- and post-Commonwealth, come alive. These are not stories of just one family and its household staff, but of an era and the notables with whom they were in contact with, who meant something to our larger local and national pasts.”
Asked if it is fortuitous that she is based here and has a background in art curatorship, making her the most qualified to continue the upkeep of MiraNila, she said, “Oh, and here I am thinking of retirement! The best legacy that my generation has for our family is to pass on stewardship responsibilities to the next generation. This is happening slowly. I’ve studied, lived, and worked away from the Philippines for almost three decades. It is pretty wonderful to have had this chance to give back. My good fortune is that my husband Daniel is happy to call our little townhouse just behind MiraNila our home.”
How MiraNila became the site of an Espiritu event, she credits all to him. “Soon after our success in March this year with Cinema Paradiso al Fresco, combining a well-loved film with live music, which the GenZs and millennials loved, Arthur called me from Germany where he was performing at the Munich Opera House. He wanted to see if we’d be open to presenting this concert. I was ecstatic that he thought of MiraNila. It did not take much to convince my siblings that this would be a fine way to remember our father, Ambassador Tomas Conrado Benitez, who grew up in MiraNila, adored the kundiman, and would take any chance to sing in the Big House by the Steinway if he found someone could play his favorites, many of which are in the May 14 program. We do this with thankful hearts that Arthur, producer Joseph Uy, Najib, and Stefanie have asked MiraNila to host the concert and launch the 13-track NCCA album.”
‘Mga Awit ng Pag-ibig at Kundiman’ is on May 14, Thursday, 6:30 pm, MiraNila Heritage House, 26 Mariposa, Quezon City. Tickets are available through Steve on Viber at tel. no. (+63945) 853-0963.
